Seeing as how tonight’s game represents the back half of a home and home series, and we just went over all of the same points 48 hours ago, I’ll try to keep this as succinct as possible.

Game Notes:

• Injuries of note for Ottawa: Rourke Chartier, Tyler Motte, Nikita Zaitsev, and Artem Zub
• For Pittsburgh: Josh Archibald, Tristan Jarry, Kris Letang, Jeff Petry, Ryan Poehling, Jeff Petry, and Jan Rutta
• Tonight we should get to see Mathieu Joseph face off against his brother for the first time in the NHL. It now seems that DJ Smith healthy scratched Joseph on Wednesday for your run of the mill missed meeting type of thing. It’s kinda wack and a little old school for my liking but to Smith’s point, the media kinda blew it out of proportion.
• Josh Norris looked a lot more rested than rusted on Wednesday, leading Sens skaters in five-on-five expected goals-for percentage, in his first game back in months.
• Reliable goaltending continues to elude the Senators. I don’t have anything to add other than hope the best and expect the worst.
• Pittsburgh has their most pronounced advantage when it comes to even strength shooting and goaltending. They convert at even strength and their goalies make the saves they need to. Ottawa has not had the same fortune and has over-relied on special teams to win whatever games they can. This does not lend itself to sustained success in the NHL.
• On that note, Ottawa has a slight advantage on special teams as we saw on Wednesday courtesy of a red-hot powerplay. In fairness I think Pittsburgh has a slightly better penalty kill than Ottawa but it mostly washes out as do the five-on-five shot rates./

Expected and Actual Goals

• As we’ve said since the Bush administration, don’t mess around with 87 and 71 on the ice./

Where to watch/listen: RDS, TSN5, TSN1200 @7PM EST

Lines from Last Game:

Ottawa Senators

Pittsburgh Penguins

Stats:

Players

Teams