![\"\"](\"https:\/\/platform.pensburgh.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/123\/2026\/02\/ott.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0,0,100,100\")
<\/a>Ottawa\u2019s an interesting team in that they\u2019ve put the pieces together with several high draft picks, now it should be time to see what they can do. They\u2019re not exactly young-young for an NHL team (everyone is 23+) and almost all of their core (Tkachuk, Batherson, Chabot, Sanderson, Stutzle) has all been around and together for 4-5-6 seasons now in a lot of cases. It looked like they might have been turning the corner when they qualified for the playoffs last year for the first time since Chris Kunitz bounced them in 2017, but it\u2019s been right back down this season so far.As we\u2019re about to discuss, there\u2019s no mystery why the team is in the position they are in..<\/p>\nKey to the game: Exploiting Ottawa\u2019s goaltending<\/p>\n
It\u2019s no exaggeration to say the Senators have had their season derailed by goaltending. Hockey is a complex sport where factors from several different areas all matter and add up, but in this instance it\u2019s pretty simple: the Senators haven\u2019t gotten enough goaltending to be competitive. With such a poor foundation to build upon, it\u2019s just impossible to go anywhere.<\/p>\n
Of course, the big hope is that the worst could be behind them if Ullmark is able to play up to his capabilities – he\u2019s been one of the league\u2019s better goalies in prior years with Boston and Buffalo. The physical tools and abilities are there, his step away from the team to get the mental areas under control could be the key to the season at this point for the Sens. They can\u2019t keep up with those types of inputs (best xG defense, worst goaltending) and expect to go far.<\/p>\n
That makes for a simple but ruthless game plan for the Pens. Go knock down the confidence. The Pens have been one of the NHL\u2019s best first period teams this year, getting out to an early lead and deflating the confidence of the goalie and whole team would be a clean and easy path to a win tonight. Don\u2019t let them get on track in that area and take advantage of what\u2019s been shaky at best as Ullmark looks to keep building back up, assuming he plays since Ottawa has another game tomorrow. If it\u2019s not Ullmark, then the task becomes picking on an almost 38-year old James Reimer.<\/p>\n
Rickard Rakell – Sidney Crosby – Justin Brazeau<\/p>\n Egor Chinakhov – Tommy Novak – Evgeni Malkin<\/p>\n Rutger McGroarty – Ben Kindel – Anthony Mantha<\/p>\n Connor Dewar – Blake Lizotte – Noel Acciari<\/p>\n Parker Wotherspoon \/ Erik Karlsson<\/p>\n Ilya Solovyov \/ Connor Clifton<\/p>\n Goalies: Arturs Silovs and Stuart Skinner<\/p>\n Potential Scratches: Bryan Rust (serving the third game of his three-game suspension), Kevin Hayes<\/p>\n IR: Kris Letang (broken foot, out at least four weeks), Ryan Graves, Filip Hallander, Caleb Jones, Jack St. Ivany<\/p>\n You can tell Evgeni Malkin is gutting it out with his shoulder seemingly giving him more problems with every passing game in the last handful of games. Will he be able to make it to the Olympic break?This will be the last game without Rust playing, at least. And with the inspired way McGroarty has been flying around the team still figures to have some decent options for the rest of the week, even though it obviously would be difficult to replace someone with the weight that comes with having a Malkin-type star in the lineup.After Skinner had perhaps his sloppiest game as a Penguin on Saturday against the Rangers, does the team now turn to giving Silovs two out of the three games in the Mon-Tues-Thurs split? Makes sense as of now. Not a Crosby or Rakell or Karlsson to be found in the team\u2019s top scorers of the course of their six-game winning streak. The contributions are coming from everywhere, most notably and noticeably from their impressive fourth line of Dewar, Lizotte and Acciari seemingly always putting their imprint on a game. That Mantha-Kindel connection has really been coming through and paying big dividends too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Who: Ottawa Senators (26-21-7, 59 points, 7th place Atlantic Division) @ Pittsburgh Penguins (28-14-11, 67 points, 2nd place…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":441541,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5113],"tags":[30296,5,4,118,1469,100,5216],"class_list":["post-441540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh-penguins","tag-game-preview","tag-hockey","tag-nhl","tag-penguins","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-penguins","tag-pittsburghpenguins"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116001673509409414","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=441540"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441540\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/441541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=441540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=441540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=441540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n