Friday night’s game against the Dallas Stars may have been Ottawa’s best effort of the season.
Young stars were buzzin’, Filly Franchise was locked in and the Sens cruised to a well-earned 4-1 victory over the Stars. Serves them right for wearing those stupid jerseys. The win snapped a three-game losing streak and sent a pretty clear message to the entire United States of America that the Sens aren’t f’n around.
And then, thanks to the wisdom of the NHL’s schedule maker, the Ottawa Senators completely disappeared for the weekend.
While the Senators have played just one game in the last month it feels like, things are going to pick up this week. After tonight’s stop in the Windy City, they are in Minnesota on Tuesday and then back home to take on Vegas on Thursday and Tampa Bay on Saturday. In fact, tonight kicks off a stretch where the Senators will play 15 games in the next 27 days.
Hope ya like watchin’ the Sens, folks.
The Ottawa Senators are in Chicago tonight.
No game day skate for the Senators today but it feels like the lineup is going to look a lot like the one that took the ice against the Dallas Stars on Friday. No changes expected up front or on the blueline. Austin Watson is close to a return but based on practice alignment, it doesn’t sound like it will be tonight. DJ Smith will meet with the media later this morning and will confirm any changes then.
Here’s how the Senators are expected to line up for this one.
Tkachuk-Norris-Batherson
Stützle-Paul-Brown
Formenton-Tierney-Ennis
Sanford-Gambrell-Shaw
Chabot-Zub
Holden-Zaitsev
Mete-Brown
Matt Murray starts tonight. They’ll go back to Filip Gustavsson tomorrow.
Tim Stützle is scoring tonight. Try to act surprised.
Puck drop is scheduled for a shade after 8:00 PM. 8:08 PM, to be exact. The game is available on Sportsnet, RDS and on the radio at TSN1200. Streaming refers to any media content – live or recorded – delivered to computers and mobile devices via the internet and played back in real time. That’s probably gonna happen too.
Here’s a closer look at this evening’s match-up via the HEAD2HEAD table.
| HEAD2HEAD |  |
 |
|---|---|---|
| Record | 3-4-0 (6 pts) | 0-7-2 (2 pts) |
| Goals For | 2.71 (20th) | 1.89 (30th) |
| Goals Against | 2.86 (T-15th) | 4.11 (31st) |
| Power Play | 27.3% (T-5th) | 25.0% (T-9th) |
| Penalty Kill | 75.0% (24th) | 87.15 (6th) |
| Shots For | 29.1 (26th) | 29.6 (24th) |
| Shots Against | 33.0 (23rd) | 32.7 (22nd) |
| Leading Scorers | Batherson- 8 pts Norris- 6 pts Brown- 5 pts Ennis- 4 pts Stützle- 4 pts |
Jones- 7 pts DeBrincat- 5 pts Kane- 5 pts Dach- 4 pts Kubalik- 4 pts |
| Starting Goalie | Matt Murray 0-1-0 1.60 GAA, .936 sv% |
Marc-Andre Fleury 0-5-0 4.63 GAA, .872 sv% |
