I took a bit of flack in the comments section for my last preview in which I referred to your Ottawa Senators as a garbage team and I while I will gladly eat crow to the extent that Ottawa won that particular game, the Sens still find themselves comfortably outside of the playoff picture behind the likes of Boston, Buffalo, and tonight’s opponent–and look, if you can’t beat the garbage babies then you deserve it when people start calling you garbage babies. Anyway, the Sens, to the credit of my colleagues and our readers here, don’t belong at the bottom of the division standings and could very well climb their way out of this thing but it has to start with a statement win tonight, okay?
Montreal, what can I say? They most recently lost to Buffalo on Thursday and Washington on Tuesday. I want to talk all sorts of trash about this team but also they currently find themselves very much in the playoff picture while Ottawa doesn’t, and I have to respect the facts. As much as I enjoy other teams in the division challenging the supremacy of Florida and Toronto, it just serves as a reminder how much I hate the likes of Montreal, Buffalo, and Detroit. I think on paper Ottawa should have a total advantage over those rivals but the grocery store won’t accept my monopoly money, ya know?
Game Notes:
Both of these teams take and draw a lot of penalties. While I would never encourage the Senators gooning it up, I also fear the inevitable. It will take a lot of discipline for Tkaptain Tkachuk and his team not to get scrappy with these losers.Both teams generate about 2.6 xGF/60 at five-on-five but Ottawa allows substantially less than Montreal’s 2.7 xGA/60 in those same situations so I reckon it will benefit the Sens to limit mental mistakes against Montreal’s top line so that Ottawa can fully leverage their expected goals advantage.As expected, Montreal’s top-heavy roster produces a decent amount of chances on the powerplay (9.3 xGF/60) so Ottawa will either have to avoid taking penalties (ha!) or learn how to kill them fast (haha!).Of note, Montreal kinda sucks at killing penalties too, allowing 8.9 xGA/60 shorthanded so if Ottawa can figure out how to channel whatever they had going in New York then this one ain’t over yet.For those of us in need of reassurance, Montreal has also endured below-average goaltending this season so as long as Ottawa’s goalies can manage to play exactly average then they’ll have a good chance.All stats courtesy of naturalstattrick.comOttawa Injuries: Linus UllmarkMontreal Injuries: Kirby Dach, Jake Evans, Patrik Laine, Alex Newhook
Where to watch/listen: City, SNE, TVAS, TSN1200 @7PM EST
Lines from Last Game:
Ottawa Senators
Zetterlund – Stützle – Batherson
Tkachuk – Cozens – Greig
Giroux – Pinto – Amadio
Cousins – Eller – Perron
Sanderson – Zub
Chabot – Jensen
Kleven – Spence
Montreal Canadiens
Texier – Suzuki – Caufield
Slafkovsky – Kapanen – Demidov
Bolduc – Danault – Anderson
Blais – Veleno – Gallagher
Hutson – Carrier
Matheson – Dobson
Xhekaj – Guhle