Game Day.
An actual Ottawa Senators’ Game Day. Sure it’s preseason but after four long months without Sens hockey, this will do just fine. Ottawa opens up their preseason schedule with a home ice match up against Auston Matthews and the Toronto Maple Leafs.
The same two teams will meet again tomorrow night in Toronto but the rosters will look completely different.
The Senators play six preseason games in total before kicking off the regular season on October 5th against the Washington Capitals.
For Guy Boucher and the rest of the Coaching Staff, these games will go a long way towards deciding who makes the cut and who doesn’t.
Looking at the team’s depth chart, there is at least one spot open on the blueline and one or two up front. And while there are favourites for those spots, a strong preseason showing can help a guy push his way onto the roster. We saw it happen with Phil Varone last year and while he wasn’t able to stick around, his strong preseason play earned him an NHL look even though he wasn’t really on anyone’s radar.
Boucher will break the Camp into two group on Wednesday of this week with one group representing the actual team plus guys considered to be on the bubble. Players from both groups will still take part in the preseason games though.
Yesterday, the Senators announced the full rosters for both games against the Leafs although decisions still have to be made about who plays and who doesn’t.
The Senators are icing a pretty strong line up, including the trio of Stone-Pageau-Ryan which has been together since the start of training camp and a blueline that includes three locks (Phaneuf, Ceci, Oduya) and then a handful of guys pushing for a spot including Thomas Chabot.
Chabot has been paired up with Dion Phaneuf for the last few days of Camp and they’ve actually looked pretty good together.
Here’s how the Senators are expected to line up for this one.
Stone-Pageau-Ryan
Smith-White-Hoffman
Perron-Sexton-Randell
Burrows-Suter-Gagne
Phaneuf-Chabot
Oduya-Ceci
Englund-Jaros
Craig Anderson is expected to play half the game while one of Danny Taylor or Marcus Hogberg gets the other half.
Puck drop is scheduled for just after 7:30 PM. The game is available on Sportsnet.
