Who: Ottawa Senators (26-21-7, 59 points, 7th place Atlantic Division) @ Pittsburgh Penguins (28-14-11, 67 points, 2nd place Metropolitan Division)
When: 7:00 p.m. eastern
How to Watch: Locally broadcast on Sportsnet Pittsburgh, streaming on ESPN+
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Pens’ Path Ahead: The Olympic break is rapidly approaching, the Pens have two more road games (tomorrow night on Long Island, then Thursday in Buffalo) before putting a pin in the NHL season for three weeks.
Opponent Track: It’s high time for the Senators to get it in gear if they want to salvage their season with a playoff run, and they just might be getting that rolling. Ottawa has won three straight games, in impressive fashion by a 16-4 total score over Vegas, Colorado and New Jersey. Overall they’re 6-2-2 in the last 10 games. After tonight, the Sens fly to Carolina to play the Hurricanes tomorrow, so they’ll have to keep those considerations in mind with some lineup/goalie decisions.
Season Series: Ottawa won a 4-0 game back on December 18th in the first matchup of the year. After tonight, the Pens go back to Ottawa on March 26th for the third and final game.
Hidden Stat: The Penguins have not been a good matchup with Ottawa lately. The Sens are 8-1-1 against Pittsburgh since the start of the 2022-23 season.
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Getting to know the Senators
Projected lines
FORWARDS
Drake Batherson – Tim Stutzle – Claude Giroux
Brady Tkachuk – Dylan Cozens – Ridley Greig
Nick Cousins – Shane Pinto – Michael Amadio
Stephen Halliday – Lars Eller – Fabian Zetterlund
DEFENSEMEN
Jake Sanderson / Artem Zub
Thomas Chabot / Nick Jensen
Tyler Kleven / Jordan Spence
Goalies: Linus Ullmark and James Reimer
Potential scratches: Kurtis MacDermid, Nikolas Matinpalo
Injured Reserve: David Perron
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Ullmark started on Saturday stopping 26/27 shots in his first game back from a month-long personal leave of absence for mental health reasons. That battle was compounded by unfounded rumors via social media.
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Giroux, 38, doesn’t have a contract for next season. Not sure if he intends to retire or not but always a chance for someone in his position that tonight could be his last game playing against the Pens in Pittsburgh. Same could probably be pointed out for the aged former Penguins Perron and Eller in the last year of their contracts and the final visit to Pittsburgh on the season scheduled tonight (although Perron won’t be playing tonight due to injury).
Season stats
via hockeydb
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Ottawa’s an interesting team in that they’ve put the pieces together with several high draft picks, now it should be time to see what they can do. They’re 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’s been right back down this season so far.
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As we’re about to discuss, there’s no mystery why the team is in the position they are in..
Key to the game: Exploiting Ottawa’s goaltending
It’s 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’s pretty simple: the Senators haven’t gotten enough goaltending to be competitive. With such a poor foundation to build upon, it’s just impossible to go anywhere.
Of course, the big hope is that the worst could be behind them if Ullmark is able to play up to his capabilities – he’s been one of the league’s 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’t keep up with those types of inputs (best xG defense, worst goaltending) and expect to go far.
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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’s 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’t let them get on track in that area and take advantage of what’s been shaky at best as Ullmark looks to keep building back up, assuming he plays since Ottawa has another game tomorrow. If it’s not Ullmark, then the task becomes picking on an almost 38-year old James Reimer.
And now for the Pens
Projected lines
FORWARDS
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Rickard Rakell – Sidney Crosby – Justin Brazeau
Egor Chinakhov – Tommy Novak – Evgeni Malkin
Rutger McGroarty – Ben Kindel – Anthony Mantha
Connor Dewar – Blake Lizotte – Noel Acciari
DEFENSEMEN
Parker Wotherspoon / Erik Karlsson
Brett Kulak / Ryan Shea
Ilya Solovyov / Connor Clifton
Goalies: Arturs Silovs and Stuart Skinner
Potential Scratches: Bryan Rust (serving the third game of his three-game suspension), Kevin Hayes
IR: Kris Letang (broken foot, out at least four weeks), Ryan Graves, Filip Hallander, Caleb Jones, Jack St. Ivany
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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?
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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.
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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.
Winning streak leaders
Not a Crosby or Rakell or Karlsson to be found in the team’s 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.
