There is nothing quite like a thorough demolishing of the Montreal Canadiens to get the weekend started right. And that is exactly what Sens fans were treated to on Friday night.
From top to bottom, Ottawa was the better team. Their forwards were fast, dynamic and basically unstoppable. The trio of Alex Formenton, Josh Norris and Drake Batherson clicked immediately and controlled the play every time they were on the ice. Shane Pinto continued his audition for the second line centre spot and at times, looked like the best player out there.
The defence pairing of Thomas Chabot and Artem Zub was pretty close to perfect. And in goal, Matt Murray made some big stops early and just looked comfortable from start to finish.
The Ottawa Senators will be looking for more of the same as the preseason scene shifts to the Bell Centre in Montreal.
With four tune-up games to go and some significant cuts expected following tonight’s game, the roster is slowly starting to take shape. There were some key battles coming into Camp- second line centre, third line right winger, bottom defence pair among them- and the serious contenders for those spots have made their case.
At this point, Shane Pinto is doing everything in his power and basically making it impossible for the Senators to send him down. It’s clear that DJ Smith came into this season with the “make him earn it approach” in mind and Pinto has done that and then some. Colin White and Chris Tierney have been fine but quite clearly not on the same level as Shane Pinto.
The situation on the wing is a little more complicated with a bigger pool of guys fighting for the spots. Both Tyler Ennis and Egor Sokolov have performed well and with the injury to Parker Kelly, it may be down to those two. And really, with the addition of Zach Sanford, it may be more of a 13th forward kind of thing once Brady shows up.
On defence, it seems pretty clear which eight guys will start the season on the NHL roster but who makes their way into the opening night lineup remains undecided. Chabot, Zub, Del Zotto and Zaitsev are locked in but those last two spots are a bit of an unknown with Josh Brown, Nick Holden, Victor Mete and Erik Brannstrom all in the mix. Three of those guys are expected to make the trip to Montreal.
Based on the roster published yesterday, the lineup may look pretty similar to the one that struggled against the Leafs.
DJ Smith is scheduled to meet with the media just after 11 AM so we’ll find out more about the lineup then. No game day skate though so line combinations will be a bit of a mystery until puck drop.
Game time is set for just after 7:00 PM. TSN5 and RDS have the television broadcast, TSN1200 has the radio feed and shady corners of the internet is where you can find your low-quality streams.
Here’s today’s HEAD2HEAD table.
