The Sunday night loss against the Leafs was probably one of the most frustrating of the season for the Senators. They had the lead on a couple of occasions but just couldn’t put the Leafs away.
Thankfully they haven’t had to sit around here and dwell on the loss. The Senators have gone West and will play their next three games on the road. The week long swing through Western Canada begins tonight with a game against the Vancouver Canucks. They are in Edmonton on Thursday and Calgary on Saturday night.
The Canucks are off to a strong start under new Head Coach Willie Desjardins and as a result, find themselves right near the top of the standings in the Western Conference. They’ve posted an impressive 11-5-0 record through their first 16 games and currently sit just one point back of top spot in the entire National Hockey League. Daniel and Henrik Sedin are both hovering around a point a game and new additions Nick Bonino and Radim Vrbata are producing offensively. Ottawa will need to be much better than they were over the weekend to have a chance against the Canucks.
Over the weekend, Paul MacLean was forced to shuffle his lines after a couple top six forwards went down with injuries. And now that he’s started juggling, he’s having a hard time stopping. More new combinations expected tonight as Alex Chiasson draws back in for Ottawa. Erik Condra, Colin Greening and Patrick Wiercioch will watch this one from the pressbox. Here’s how MacLean will line his team up to start the game tonight.
MacArthur-Turris-Chiasson
Michalek-Zibanejad-Ryan
Hoffman-Lazar-Stone
Smith-Legwand-Neil
Phillips-Karlsson
Cowen-Ceci
Borowiecki-Gryba
Craig Anderson gets the start in the Ottawa goal.
Puck drop is scheduled for just after 10:00 PM Eastern time so pregame naps are strongly encouraged. Game can be found on TSN5 and RDS.
