Game 32 preview: Anaheim Ducks @ Ottawa Senators

A preview of the game between the Ottawa Senators and Anaheim Ducks on 19 December 2014.

The Ottawa Senators will host the league leading Anaheim Ducks looking to win consecutive games for the first time in over six weeks. The Senators are coming off their first regulation win in almost four weeks and are 3-1-1 in their last five games. The Ducks won 2-1 in Montréal last night and made the short trip across the Canada-Québec border for tonight's game.

Craig Anderson will start and there are no lineup changes. Here are the lines and pairings from Sylvain St-Laurent.

MacArthur - Turris - Stone
Hoffman - Zibanejad - Ryan
Greening - Legwand - Michalek
Condra - Pageau - Chiasson

Phillips - Karlsson
Cowen - Ceci
Borowiecki - Gryba

Anderson (starter)
Lehner

Some notes for tonight:

  • There are 50 games left after tonight so there is still plenty of time to turn things around if the Senators can actually play better. That's the good news.
  • The bad news is that they are still stuck with the same roster. Injuries have helped to create a better roster on the ice though, but not by a lot.
  • Erik Karlsson has at least two shots on goal in 21 consecutive games. He has 44 more shots than Kyle Turris who is second on the team in shots.
  • How strange was the game in New Jersey? The Senators had a strong start, spent quite a bit of time in the Devils zone. They scored and basically did nothing for the rest of the game. Karlsson did ask for the team to have the day off so perhaps they were just really tired.
  • Craig Anderson having a save percentage of 92.9% and yet winning only seven of his 19 starts is a good indicator of how terrible the team has been.
  • Will Cody Ceci ever take a penalty?
  • Retweet for death by Phillipsing, favourite for death by Borowiecking.
  • Jakob Silfverberg currently has three fewer points than Bobby Ryan. Jacke has scored on only 4.7% of his shots so far.
  • Sami Vatanen is one of the most entertaining players in the NHL. Reminds me of Erik in many ways./

Here are some stats for the two teams tonight. All stats are from NHL.com except Corsi and Fenwick are from naturalstattrick.com.

Category Ottawa Anaheim
Player # Player #
Goals Clarke MacArthur 9 Matt Beleskey 15
Assists Kyle Turris 15 Ryan Getzlaf 25
Points Erik Karlsson 20 Ryan Getzlaf 35
Shots Erik Karlsson 122 Ryan Kesler 99
Average Ice time Erik Karlsson 27:43 Francois Beauchemin 22:43

Category Ottawa Anaheim
# Rank # Rank
Goals For 2.55 19th 2.79 14th
Goals Against 2.68 17th 2.56 13th
Corsi % 47.82% 24th 49.97% 18th
Fenwick % 45.45% 28th 50.56% 17th
Shots For 28.8 24th 30.2 14th
Shots Against 34.3 28th 28.8 12th

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