Game 55 preview: Carolina Hurricanes @ Ottawa Senators

The Ottawa Senators play the third game of five straight at home when they host the Carolina Hurricanes tonight. After picking up five points in their last three games, Ottawa has moved nine points ahead of the Hurricanes with Carolina in 28th place. After tonight, Ottawa will play Montreal and Florida at home before heading out to California before the trade deadline.

The big news was that Ottawa re-signed Marc Methot to a four-year contract extension earlier in the day. Shane Prince will make his NHL debut with Jean-Gabriel Pageau sent to the AHL and Jared Cowen will return for Mark Borowiecki. Clarke MacArthur will also return to the lineup. Here are the lines and pairings from Sylvain St-Laurent.

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

Methot - Karlsson
Wiercioch - Ceci
Cowen - Gryba

Lehner (starter)
Hammond

Some notes for tonight:

• Mike Hoffman finally picked up his first power play point of the season, but is still looking for his first power play goal.
• Erik Karlsson is looking absolutely incredible these days. Ottawa has outshot the opposition 30-10 at 5-on-5 with Karlsson on the ice in the last two games and 44-18 in shot attempts. He has five goals and five assists for 10 points over his last 10 games.
• Robin Lehner has allowed two goals or less in five of his last seven games.
• Mark Stone and Mike Hoffman are both on pace for 50 points as rookies. Hoffman might get close to 30 goals as well.
• Milan Michalek has 11 points in 13 games after getting only nine in the first 36.
• With both Chris Phillips and Mark Borowiecki both scratched, and Jared Cowen on the bottom pairings, this might be the most optimum usage of Senators defencemen this season.
• Shane Prince has 38 points in 47 AHL games this season./

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