After 180 days since his last hockey game on April 18 in the first game of the Ottawa Senators’ Stanley Cup Playoff round against the Carolina Hurricanes, defenceman Artem Zub is expected to make his regular season debut for the club and provide some much-needed support on a rather depleted blueline.
Zub has been skating as of late and has been inching closer to a return for about a week now. He suffered a knee injury after an on-ice collision with Hurricanes forward Seth Jarvis and exited the game. At the team’s morning skate, Zub was taking regular shifts with captain Thomas Chabot. This gives the impression that he will begin the game with one of the club’s top defenders, who averaged 27:59 of ice time over the last five games.
An ever-changing roster
His return is very encouraging because his veteran presence and defensive play bring some more stability on the Senators’ back end that is currently missing Jake Sanderson and Nikolas Matinpalo. This also caused head coach Travis Green to do some line shuffling. With the Zub and Chabot pairing, Jordan Spence has been moved to the third pairing with defenceman Cam Crotty. Crotty comes in after his brief stint out of the lineup with an injury. With Jake Sanderson skating at the morning skate, he must be close to returning to the lineup. Once that happens, it is fair to assume that he will once again be paired with Zub and Chabot will be reunited with Spence.
With the Senators also announcing that winger William Eklund had surgery yesterday to repair a torn tendon in his ankle and that the Swedish forward will be out of the lineup for 10-12 weeks, the ‘top line left winger’ experiment continues. On today’s episode of “Who Will Be Drake Batherson and Tim Stützle’s Left Winger?”, we see Stephen Halliday making his first appearance in that slot on the starting lineup.
Stephen Halliday playing in the team’s unfortunate 7-2 loss against the St. Louis Blues on Tuesday night. He recorded his first assist of the season on Fabian Zetterlund’s goal. | Icon Sportswire/GettyImages
Halliday brings his hockey IQ and skill to the team’s top line. He has two goals and an assist through the first seven games of the season. Hopefully, he can find a spot on this line, as it seems that past attempts with André Burakovsky and Warren Foegele have been sidelined at the moment. His move from the fourth line centre to the top line’s wing means that Ridly Greig is now in his place between Foeegele and Zetterlund. Green said after practice that he is looking to spark the team’s fourth line five-on-five play, and he is hoping that this move can help.
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