Game 19 Preview and Open Thread: Ottawa Senators @ Vegas Golden Knights

The Ottawa Senators season is on life support and the clock is ticking. After leaving two points on the table in San Jose, they come into Vegas nine points behind Detroit for the second wild card spot. The stakes won’t get much higher.

This is the toughest opponent of the trip, too. The Vegas Golden Knights are running away with the West at 31 points, only behind Boston and New Jersey for the league lead. If there’s one thing to hang some hope on here it is that they’ve slowed down a bit from “world killers” to “really good” - they have allowed twice as many goals in their last 10 games (34) than they did in the first 10 (17).

There are some roster question marks for the Sens today. Jacob Larsson was returned to Belleville yesterday and Lassi Thomson called up, and he will be in the lineup tonight. Thomas Chabot was on the ice in a regular jersey for yesterday’s practice but was ruled out for the game today.

The Sens aren’t skating today, but here are the lines from yesterday. Starting goalie is still to be decided.

Game Notes

• The Senators are livin’ devil may care with the roster, after they hit the road to California with only six healthy blue liners, and then swapped one out for another that has to make it most of the way across the continent to get to the game
• It can take a strong heart and a nerve of steel to watch Ottawa at points this season. While they continue to play decent to good overall (with the occasional game as an exception), it is getting to the point where every time they’ve got a rush, or every time they set up a good cycle, I’m just waiting for the pass into the skates, the puck bobbled over the stick, or some other error that ends up with the puck in the back of their own net
• A regulation loss tonight really will send all those off-season hopes down the drain, if they aren’t gone already
• One thing that hasn’t been a problem for most of the season was effort. Mistakes were getting made, luck was sometimes getting in the way, but by goodness they were trying. But in the past two games, and especially in San Jose, the team was looking deflated at times. Won’t stand a chance against Vegas if they don’t give it everything they’ve got

Stats

It’s a 10PM start on TSN5, TVA Sports and the radio call at TSN1200.