After an enormous 7-2 win over the St. Louis Blues on Sunday, the Ottawa Senators have had two extremely difficult matchups on the road in Boston and Carolina. They’ve gone 0-2 on their road trip, which was to be expected. After losing 4-0 last night, they head to Montreal today to face the Canadiens, hoping to gain back some momentum. This will be their final game on the road trip before heading home to face the Detroit Red Wings twice at home.

The Senators played the Canadiens in back-to-back games at the end of January, where they won 5-0 at home and 5-4 on the road. They also beat Montreal 3-2 at home in December, so they are looking to go a perfect 4-0 against the Canadiens this season. With a quick turnaround from yesterday and some players banged up according to DJ Smith, the projected lines could look similar yesterday’s except Mads Søgaard starting is instead of Cam Talbot and Mark Kastelic is in for Ridly Greig:

Sens lines from the warmup in Carolina.

Tkachuk Stützle Giroux
DeBrincat Pinto Batherson
Brassard Greig Gauthier
Joseph Gambrell Watson

Chabot Zub
Sanderson Hamonic
Brannstrom Holden

Talbot [starts]
Sogaard

— TSN 1200 (@TSN1200) February 24, 2023

The Canadiens lined up like this last night in Philadelphia, although it’s unclear if there will be any changes. It’s a good bet that Samuel Montembault will start instead of Jake Allen:

Rafaël Harvey-Pinard — Nick Suzuki — Josh Anderson
Mike Hoffman — Jonathan Drouin — Jesse Ylonen
Rem Pitlick — Christian Dvorak — Evgenii Dadonov
M. Pezzetta — C. Tierney — A. Belzile

M. Matheson — J. Barron
C. Schueneman — D. Savard
J. Harris — J. Kovacevic

Jake Allen

— Alexandre Pratt (@alexandrepratt) February 24, 2023

Game Notes:

• Greig was sent down before the game, and Kastelic was recalled. Although Greig wasn’t as noticeable the last several games, I thought he still played well enough. Kastelic had one goal and four assists in seven games for Belleville, and hopefully his time down there gave him a jolt for the NHL. I’m sure Greig will be up at some point this season because there are others who aren’t as deserving of a spot.
• Greig seemed like a good depth player in the lineup, and now their lineup looks very thin on the bottom half once again. We need to see their depth players step up.
• Montembault has actually been solid for Montreal, with a .908 SV% in 25 games. At the same time, that lineup is...almost AHL caliber besides Nick Suzuki. We keep talking about “must-win” games, but it will be an awful look to lose this one, even on the second half of a back-to-back.
• The Canadiens also played last night, winning 5-2 in Philadelphia against the Flyers. They’ve won two in a row and are 5-2-0 in their last seven games.
• Tonight will be Mads Søgaards’ fifth game of the season, and he’s sitting on a .913 SV%, which is quite impressive. I’m curious to see if he can keep up his good play.
• After being snake-bitten last night in Carolina and getting shutout on 32 shots and only scorign once in Boston on Monday, I expect a big night from the offense. Ottawa’s top-six is too good to have three straight lackluster games.
• This is Ottawa’s final game against Montreal this season and they have a chance to go undefeated (4-0) against them for the first time since 1996-97, although they had three wins and two ties so that only sort of counts. Other than that, they’ve never done it. Despite both teams not being in the playoffs, you can bet that the rivalry amongst fanbases is still there./

Player Stats

Team Stats

Puck drop is at 7:00 EST.