Game 15 preview: Ottawa Senators @ Nashville Predators

Depending on how you look at it, the Ottawa Senators were both lucky and unlucky to come out of Saturday's game in Carolina with one point. On the one hand, they were badly outplayed but on the other, they were seconds from winning. Tonight they end their mini-trip through the American south with a game in Nashville. This will be the second and final meeting between the two clubs with the Predators winning 4-3 in a shootout in Ottawa on 17 October.

Cody Ceci will return to the lineup with Chris Wideman returning as the healthy scratch despite scoring his first career NHL goal. Craig Anderson will start. Here are the lines:

Hoffman - Turris - Stone
Prince - Zibanejad - Ryan
Michalek - Pageau - Chiasson
Smith - Lazar - Neil

Methot - Karlsson
Wiercioch - Ceci
Cowen - Borowiecki

Anderson (starter)
Hammond

Some notes for tonight:

• Erik Karlsson continues to look for his first goal of the season. When will it finally go in for him? Coming into this season, he scored 46 goals over 262 games over the previous four season. That is a rate of 21 goals per 82 games.
• Despite scoring a goal, Chris Wideman had a pretty rough game with Jared Cowen. Still, it is disappointing to see Wideman get such a short leash when we have a much larger sample of knowing that Cowen and Mark Borowiecki don't make for a good pairing.
• Mike Hoffman is back on the top line that was so dominant early in the season. Could that be the spark the Senators need? Hope so because they need something, despite not being too badly placed in the standings.
• It was very disheartening to see Ottawa get dominated so badly against Winnipeg and Carolina in the third period. Both teams had played the night before while the Senators were rested.
• Only Toronto has fewer non-shootout wins than the Senators' four this season.
• Patrick Wiercioch had one of his better games of the season. His play on Alex Chiasson's goal was wonderful to see./

Here are some stats for the two teams tonight. All stats are from NHL.com except Corsi and Fenwick are from www.puckon.net. Note that Corsi is now adjusted for score as well as the venue and event type.