Game 27: Tampa Bay Lightning @ Ottawa Senators
Clear out the cobwebs at Scotiabank Place, the Senators are back! Tonight, they welcome their future divisional rivals (sigh), the Tampa Bay Lightning. Between Saturday's game against Washington, tonight's game and Wednesday's game against Washington again, Ottawa will get plenty of practise playing against the trap.
The Senators will make no changes, with Nikita Filatov scratched and Filip Kuba injured. Ici sont les lignes:
Colin Greening - Jason Spezza - Bobby Butler
Milan Michalek - Nick Foligno - Daniel Alfredsson
Kaspars Daugavins - Zack Smith - Erik Condra
Zenon Konopka - Jesse Winchester - Chris Neil
Jared Cowen - Erik Karlsson
Chris Phillips - Sergei Gonchar
Brian Lee - David Rundblad
Craig Anderson (starter)
Alex Auld
Talking points and statistics after the jump.
Here are my talking points for tonight:
- Possible future #1 pairing: With Filip Kuba out and Chris Phillips struggling, we should expect to see Cowen and Karlsson for well over 20 minutes of even strength time. Then depending on whether we have more power play time or penalty kill time, one of them should approach 30 minutes. Karlsson may end up with Rundblad at some point in the future, but Karlsson/Cowen certainly worked well on Saturday.
- Phillips struggling: Chris Phillips had a decent start to the season, but since the Filip Kuba injury, Phillips has been pretty bad in the last two games. Hopefully he can put together a solid game tonight.
- Match-up of NHL's leading goal scorers: You probably expected to be Steven Stamkos to be leading the NHL in goals, but for Milan Michalek to be tied with him?
- Match-up of NHL's leading offensive defencemen: Erik Karlsson leads all defencemen with 23 points. The Lightning's Marc-Andre Bergeron is tied for second with 20.
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
