It's been over three weeks since the last Lottery Pick Update, and while the teams in lottery pick position haven't changed, the order has. On January 24, the Ottawa Senators were sitting 27th in the NHL with a 10.7% chance of getting the 1st-overall pick. Today, the Senators are 29th and have an 18.8% chance of getting that first pick.

Here's how the standings shake down today:

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In their 18-year history, the Ottawa Senators have drafted 160 players. Over the last few days, I've put together a collection of interesting stats, trends, and facts about these players. Broken down by position, these will be appearing throughout the day.

And finally: defencemen.

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In their 18-year history, the Ottawa Senators have drafted 160 players. Over the last few days, I've put together a collection of interesting stats, trends, and facts about these players. Broken down by position, these will be appearing throughout the day.

After the jump: wingers.

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In their 18-year history, the Ottawa Senators have drafted 160 players. Over the last few days, I've put together a collection of interesting stats, trends, and facts about these players. Broken down by position, these will be appearing throughout the day.

Next up: centres.

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In their 18-year history, the Ottawa Senators have drafted 160 players. Over the last few days, I've put together a collection of interesting stats, trends, and facts about these players. Broken down by position, these will be appearing throughout the day.

First up: goaltenders.

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Your collection of stats and trivia on the morning of game six between the Pittsburgh Penguins and Ottawa Senators:

• Pascal Leclaire's 56-save performance broke his career-high of 48 saves set back in 2006. His previous best this season was 33 saves on January 7, 2010 in a 5-2 loss to Washington.
• Leclaire's playoff save percentage is .927, a significant improvement over his regular season total of .887. The last time his save percentage was above .900? November 21, 2009.
• Brian Elliott has the lowest save percentage of any goalie who has started a game at .853.
• Anton Volchenkov leads the NHL with 26 blocked shots, six more than anyone else. He blocks a shot approximately every sixth shift, an average of once every 4:26 of ice time. Matt Carkner is second on the Senators, blocking a shot every 8:08 on the ice.
• Pittsburgh's Jay McKee averages a blocked shot every 5:56, but has only played three games. Kris Letang, who leads the Penguins with 13 blocked shots (half as many as Volchenkov), averages one every 9:42.
• Mike Rupp leads both teams with a hit every 2:01 on the ice. Zack Smith averages one every 2:49.
• Only four players have zero shots on goal: Jonathan Cheechoo and Shean Donovan for Ottawa, Jordan Leopold and Mike Rupp for Pittsburgh.
• Jason Spezza's 8 giveaways are the most in the series. Alex Goligoski is second with 5.
• Sidney Crosby leads both teams with 8 takeaways. Alexei Ponikarovsky and Mike Fisher are tied for second with 5 apiece.
• Sidney Crosby has won 68 faceoffs, 22 more than anyone else. He also has 14 points for an average of 2.8 per game. Jason Spezza and Evgeni Malkin are second with 7 points each.
• Erik Karlsson and Sergei Gonchar both have 6 points, tying them with Drew Doughty and Jack Johnson of Los Angeles for the lead in scoring amongst defencemen. Karlsson also leads the NHL in rookie scoring. Peter Regin is tied with John Carlson (Washington) and Tyler Ennis (Buffalo) for second with 4 points.
• Matt Carkner’s last goal was Novermber 19, 2009 against Pittsburgh. Marc-Andre Fleury has now allowed 67% of Carkner’s NHL goals.
• Finally, Carkner's goal was only his second playoff goal at any level since he was 17. He never scored a playoff goal in his four seasons in the OHL, and only had one in his eight seasons in the AHL.

The most valuable player is supposed to be the player who is deemed to be most valuable to a team's success. More often than not, this player is the one who puts up the most points. But what if you threw away individual statistics like goals and assists? What if you looked at how a team plays without a certain player in their lineup? How much of a hit does their record take if someone is subtracted? Or, in some cases, how much better is a team without a specific player?

Silver Seven looks at the Ottawa Senators' record with and without each player and comes to some conclusions on who the most (and the least) valuable players are.

The Most Valuable Players

Zack Smith is a fourth-liner. He rarely plays more than eight minutes per game, and has only three points in 15 games. But, when Smith plays, the team tends to win. The 10-4-1 record the Senators have when Smith plays is superb, but what's really startling about Z. Smith is that the team was 0-3 in his first three games. From January 14 onward, the Senators were 10-1-1 when Zack Smith dressed. That one regulation loss was in the final game of the season.

He's a hard-working player who makes his presence known every time he's on the ice. He does everything that's asked of him, and his reliability means that other players can focus on what they do best.

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It’s been a long absence, but the Ottawa Senators are back in the NHL playoffs. Okay, it was only one season, but it had been a long, long time since Ottawa had gone a spring without playoff hockey (minus that pesky lockout). But now the Senators are back, and they’re picking up right where they left off: playing the Pittsburgh Penguins.

The Penguins, as you probably know, knocked off the Senators in the 2008 playoffs in a first-round sweep en route to a berth in the Stanley Cup Finals, where they would ultimately lose to the Detroit Red Wings. The Senators did basically the same thing a year earlier when they took out Pittsburgh in the first round, only to lose the Cup to the Anaheim Ducks in five games. Buoyed by not playing the Senators last season, the 2009 Pittsburgh Penguins went on to defeat the Red Wings and take back the Cup.

By now we’ve established a pattern: whenever the Senators and Penguins meet, the winner will ultimately go on to lose in the Finals to some Western Conference powerhouse. That’s why this series is so important, because it will decide who the runner-up for the Stanley Cup will be.

So how do the 2010 Ottawa Senators and Pittsburgh Penguins compare? Silver Seven breaks it down for you with plenty of detail and charts and such.

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