Game 15 Preview, Ottawa Senators @ Colorado Avalanche

It’s been almost a week, but it’s time for the Swedish adventure to finally get to the games!

There were no line rushes from the morning skate, but here is a best guess based on what they were doing earlier in the week.

Dzingel-Brassard-Stone
Smith-Duchene-Hoffman
Pyatt-Pageau-Burrows
DiDomenico-Thompson

Claesson-Karlsson
Oduya-Phaneuf
Wideman/Harpur-Ceci

Anderson (Starter)
Condon

Here are some notes for tonight:

• We’ve been waiting for it all week, but today could be the season debut of Nick Paul
• Boucher may go with 11 & 7 though, in which case it’s Ben Harpur in instead of Nick Paul
• The Paul vs Harpur issue will be decided after the warm-ups, but it sounds like they’re leaning towards Harpur
• Oh yeah, Matt Duchene! He skated between Smith and Hoffman earlier this week, so that’s the best guess of who he starts with
• Anybody else very excited by the prospect of Duchene and Hoffman together?
• The 5 days off have dropped the Sens back to the bubble in terms of points, with the two wild card teams actually having more points than Ottawa. They’ve got games in hand, but have to take advantage of them for that to matter
• The time off also dropped Erik Karlsson from 5th to 9th in D scoring. The rest of the top 10 have played 4+ games more than EK
• It’s a 2pm Eastern puck drop today/

Here are some stats tonight from NHL.com and Natural Stat Trick:

Team Stats

Category	Ottawa	Senators	Washington	Capitals
--	Value	Rank	Value	Rank
Goals/GP	3.21	9th	2.73	23rd
Goals against/GP	3.05	19th	3.18	23rd
Shots/GP	30.9	18th	29.3	28th
Shots against/GP	29.7	4th	32.8	24th
Corsi (5v5, Score & Venue Adjusted)	48.15	22nd	47.48	25th
Fenwick (5v5, SVA)	50.29	14th	46.20	28th

Player Stats

	Ottawa	Senators	Boston	Bruins
--	Player	#	Player	#
Goals	Matt Duchene	27	Brad Marchand	34
Assists	Erik Karlsson (out)	53	Brad Marchand	51
Points	Karlsson/Stone (both out)	62	Brad Marchand	85
Shots	Mike Hoffman	253	David Pastrnak	236
TOI/GP	Erik Karlsson (out)	26:44	Zdeno Chara	22:53