Game 13 Hub: Ottawa Senators @ New York Rangers

After a week with just one game, it’s time to kick off a busy week for the Senators. They’re playing tonight and tomorrow, as well as Thursday and Saturday, and again on Monday a week from now. Hopefully they were weaponized enough by that rest to turn in some good performances now.

The Sens are in New York to take on the Rangers tonight. Anders Nilsson gets the start, The D remain unchanged for tonight (Cody Goloubef will make his season debut tomorrow), and the forwards were tweaked a bit with J.C. Beaudin back with the team and both Logan Brown and Scott Sabourin out with injuries. Here were yesterday’s lines, though we’ll update them after the morning skate:

My thoughts:

• You have to think that Vladislav Namestnikov gets a shot on the top line, right? I love Jean-Gabriel Pageau, but he’s not a first-line centre, even on this bad of a team.
• I also have a hard time seeing J.C. Beaudin getting more than six minutes tonight.
• Someone made a joke recently on Twitter that NHL coaches put their forward lines through the blender after one bad shift, but keep D pairs together for a decade. It is funny that we haven’t seen a change at all in pairings since the season began. I like the ordering of the left-side D, but I’d kind of like to see the right-side partners shuffle through. In particular, Thomas Chabot and Dylan DeMelo looked good together last year, and I’d like to see more of that.
• Do we think Nick Paul is with the team the rest of the season after that performance against the Sharks? I imagine so, but things may be off when a bunch of players get back from injuries.
• Tough break for Logan Brown, out with injury just as he was looking to earn his coach’s trust at the NHL level. Of course, with “Injured Reserve” as his middle name, you’d expect to him to spend a bunch of time hurt.
• Alexander Georgiev will start against the Sens, which seems like the Sens facing a backup again for the 9th time this season, except that Georgiev is on his 3rd start in a row, so maybe he’s actually supplanted Henrik Lundqvist as the start in New York. That would mean the Sens get an opponent’s top goalie for the third game in a row.
• Game starts at 7 p.m. EST, on TV on TSN5, RDS, and MSG, and on the radio on TSN 1200.
• Normally we end with the game details, but (mild gruesomeness warning) I think it’s important you all see this morning after picture from Scott Sabourin saying he’s doing OK/

Scott Sabourin posted this on his Instagram account this morning. #Sens pic.twitter.com/IyXPmJyKON

— Bruce Garrioch (@SunGarrioch) November 3, 2019

Stats (via NHL.com and NaturalStatTrick.com):

Team Stats

Player Stats