Game 17 Preview: Sens @ Lightning

It’s never really a good time to fly down to Tampa Bay to play the Eastern Conference leading Lightning, but this Saturday night match-up seems particularly ominous: the Sens had their hearts broken less than a week ago by this same Tampa squad and, just to make things less fun than they already were, Victor Hedman is returning to the line-up for the home town squad tonight. Things are less than ideal right now for your Ottawa Senators!

But in the NHL, on any given night, anything can happen. That’s why you play the games, after all.

Here are the projected lineups for tonight:

Tampa Bay Lightning

Forwards

J.T. Miller - Steven Stamkos - Nikita Kucherov

Yanni Gourde - Brayden Point - Tyler Johnson

Alex Killorn - Anthony Cirelli - Mathieu Joseph

Adam Erne - Cedric Paquette - Ryan Callahan

Defense

Victor Hedman - Dan Girardi

Ryan McDonagh - Anton Stralman

Braydon Coburn - Mikhail Sergachev

Goalies

Andrei Vasilevskiy

Louis Domingue

Ottawa Senators

Forwards

Ryan Dzingel - Matt Duchene - Nick Paul

Brady Tkachuk - Colin White - Mark Stone

Bobby Ryan - Chris Tierney - Mikkel Boedker

Magnus Paajarvi - Tom Pyatt

Defense

Thomas Chabot - Dylan DeMelo

Maxime Lajoie - Cody Ceci

Mark Borowiecki - Chris Wideman

Christian Jaros

Goaltending

Craig Anderson (starter)

Mike Condon

Game Notes:

• Guy Boucher told the media today that he will determine whether the Sens play with a 12/6 or 11/7 formation after the warm-up tonight. I wrote about this choice a bit yesterday in Five Thoughts, and given the tactical choices I explored there yesterday I’d expect him to opt for 11/7.
• Colin White has been impressive to start the year, and it looks he will be rewarded with a chance to center the second line between Stone and Tkachuk.
• Craig Anderson faced 42 shots on Thursday against the Vegas Golden Knights, the third time in his last four starts that he’s faced at least 40 that many and the sixth time already on the season. Accordingly he was given the day off of practice on Friday. Somebody get this man some help back there!
• Thomas Chabot should be one of the front-runners for the Norris. I’m just saying it here now, because I want it on the record. Dude is just out of control at the moment.
• The Tampa Bay Lightning remain an awesome team, having an awesome year. When they’re at full strength and firing on all cylinders, there might not be a better team in the league.
• The Sens and Lightning are both in the top 5 in goals for, there’s a good chance we’ll see some fireworks tonight./

Player Stats

Team Stats