Game 45 preview: Ottawa Senators @ New York Rangers

Despite one of their best performances of the season, the Ottawa Senators lost 3-2 at home to the Carolina Hurricanes on Saturday. Tonight they will head out on the road for one game against the Rangers. Ottawa continues to be a long way from a playoff spot, sitting 10 points behind the final playoff spot and only two points above fifth last in the NHL.

Craig Anderson will start again will Patrick Wiercioch will be scratched for local bartender, Chris Phillips. Curtis Lazar will also be scratched for the face puncher known as Chris Neil.

Here are the lines and pairings from Gord Wilson.

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

Methot - Karlsson
Cowen - Ceci
Phillips - Gryba

Anderson (starter)
Lehner

Some notes for tonight:

• Can you imagine the reaction if I don't know...Alex Kovalev had said this?
• Admittedly a small sample but Ottawa has the second highest score adjusted Corsi in eight games in 2015. In the slightly larger small of 17 games since 11 December when Dave Cameron took over, Ottawa is ranked seventh.
• Ottawa also happened to benefit during that period thanks to the man games won due to injuries to Chris Neil, Zack Smith and Mark Borowiecki. It will be interesting to see how that holds up now.
• Erik Karlsson could probably have scored five goals on Saturday night. It was such absurdly bad luck for the whole team. They must have had 30 scoring chances.
• There are only 38 more games to survive.
• Colin Greening has been told that he will be placed on waivers if the team can't trade him so he has likely played his last game for Ottawa.
• For those of you obsessed with passing the Leafs, Ottawa can do that with a win tonight and tomorrow.
• Milan Michalek has actually been playing quite well recently. Hopefully he can create some semblance of trade value for the summer.
• Is Curtis Lazar likely heading back to juniors? There are still a few more games before this season counts as one of the seven for unrestricted free agency purposes./