Game 44 preview: Carolina Hurricanes @ Ottawa Senators

The Ottawa Senators continue a stretch of 12 home games out of 15 when they host the Carolina Hurricanes tonight. Ottawa returned from a road trip to beat the Habs 4-1 at home on Thursday night. Carolina is coming off a 3-0 shutout loss at home to Vancouver last night.

The Senators will make no changes. Craig Anderson will start again with Colin Greening and Chris Phillips the healthy scratches again.

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

Methot - Karlsson
Cowen - Ceci
Wiercioch - Gryba

Anderson (starter)
Lehner

Some notes for tonight:

• Erik Karlsson really has been fantastic since Dave Cameron became the coach hasn't he? With him on the ice, the Senators have had over 60% of the shot attempts 5-on-5 over the last 10 games. This is showing in the goals scored with him on the ice as well.
• Mika Zibanejad is on pace for 20 goals and 21 assists. That's pretty decent second line numbers no?
• Mike Hoffman continues to be among the league leaders in even strength goals, currently in a tie for sixth.
• Can we hope to possibly see Chris Phillips dealt by the trade deadline? He is going to stay in the rotation, but if the only excuse to play him was for his supposed leadership, that isn't really valid any more then right?
• Jared Cowen and Cody Ceci continue to be a disaster and it has been going on for several weeks, if not months. Ottawa doesn't really have better options though, so it is what it is.
• Craig Anderson would probably be a candidate for the Vezina Trophy if the team was doing better. He is fourth in the NHL with a save percentage of 92.8% and second among goalies that have played at least half their team's games.
• Ottawa has one of the worst records in the NHL in one-goal games, winning just nine out of 26 games going 9-9-8./

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