Game 21 Hub: Ottawa Senators vs Toronto Maple Leafs

Despite a not-so-great showing through 20 games thus far, the Ottawa Senators took a step in the right direction on Tuesday with possibly their most impressive win of the season against the New York Rangers.

Because of the lack of results against some of the lesser teams in the league, such as the Columbus Blue Jackets, Buffalo Sabres, and New York Islanders, they'll need to make up for that with some more wins against teams like the Toronto Maple Leafs – tonight's opponents.

Here are the projected lines for Ottawa, with Anton Forsberg expected to make his third-straight start:

Game Notes:

• This will be Ottawa's first game of the year with Jacques Martin as Senior Advisor to the coaching staff. So long as they don't revert to how they were defending through most of November, the move will have been a success.
• Drake Batherson struggled mightily to start the year but he's appeared to return to the form we saw in the 2021-22 season before his injury. He has 6 goals and 6 assists in his last 9 games, and his shooting percentage has nearly doubled from last year.
• It's been a struggle for Dominik Kubalik this season. He's dead last in plus-minus on the team with a -11, is one of the weakest at driving play at 5-on-5, and has one more point than Parker Kelly. He seems like a prime candidate for the club to move once Shane Pinto's suspension is over.
• The Leafs, funnily enough, are tied for last in the league with 5 regulation wins, despite a 12-6-4 record. So we've got a team that doesn't like winning in regulation, against a team that can't seem to pick up a damn loser point. Should be interesting.
• Seriously, where in the actual heck is Maxence Guenette?
• Which Anton Forsberg will show up tonight? Oddly enough, he appears to play better the more shots he faces, which is the opposite of what we saw last season.
• It's a 7:00 pm EST start, available on RDS2, TSN4, TSN5, and TSN1200.

Stats: