Game 16 preview: Ottawa Senators @ Edmonton Oilers

The Ottawa Senators will look to snap a season long three-game losing streak when they visit the Edmonton Oilers tonight. The Senators currently sit sixth in the Atlantic Division with a 7-4-4 record while the Oilers are last in the Pacific Division with a 6-9-1 record.

There will be no changes to the lineup for Ottawa. Here are the lines and pairings from Don Brennan.

Ottawa

MacArthur - Turris - Chiasson
Michalek - Zibanejad - Ryan
Smith - Legwand - Neil
Hoffman - Lazar - Stone

Phillips - Karlsson
Cowen - Ceci
Borowiecki - Gryba

Anderson (starter)
Lehner

Some notes for tonight:

• Paul MacLean is known for doing a lot of nonsensical things in his time at Ottawa. His decision to keep Mike Hoffman and Mark Stone at 12 minutes on Tuesday and Milan Michalek at 20 minutes has to be up there with the most bizarre.
• Stone and Hoffman now have five goals each. All of Hoffman's goals have been at even strength while all but one of Stone's have been at even strength. The two have combined for nine out of the 23 even strength goals scored by Senators forwards.
• All of this is despite Hoffman being 11th out of 14 among Senators forwards in total even strength ice time while Stone is 10th. Hoffman in particular has received very little power play ice time (13 minutes) and is still fourth among the team's forwards in shots on goal.
• Erik Karlsson is third in the NHL on shots on goal with 61. Alexander Ovechkin leads with 73 while Claude Giroux is second with 65.
• Karlsson has only four even strength points so far this season.
• Zack Smith does not have a point in seven straight games.
• Curtis Lazar had a career high five shots against Vancouver on Tuesday.
• Neiler gonna Neil Neil Neil. After a restrained start, Neil has taken a minor penalty in four out of the last five games, with the most recent one negating a goal.
• Mika Zibanejad is struggling with just one point and four shots on goal in his last five games.

Here are some stats from last season for the two teams tonight. All stats are from NHL.com except Corsi and Fenwick are from naturalstattrick.com. Also in breaking news, the nerds have decided that "close" events are actually less predictive than raw Corsi/Fenwick and "adjusted" Corsi/Fenwick are the most predictive. Until that is sorted out, I will publish total 5-on-5 Corsi/Fenwick.