Game 74 Hub: Ottawa Senators @ Minnesota Wild

It's become a bit of an annoying trend. Why do the Ottawa Senators wait until their season is over before playing up to their potential? Well, you can ask Joonas Korpisalo and Anton Forsberg about that. Because those two are the biggest reasons for the team's 5-game winning streak as well as their horrid season prior to that point.

Boris Katchouk continues to impress on the fourth line and Jakob Chychrun seems to have gotten his groove back but it would be irrelevant if those soft, deflating goals from low-danger areas we've seen throughout the year were still occurring.

Standing in the way of a 6th-straight victory are the Minnesota Wild, who recently lost an overtime game to the Vegas Golden Knights and earned zero standings points in the process. I didn't know until then that pulling the goalie in OT had that repercussion – explains why teams don't do that more often.

Maybe Ottawa should do the same if this one goes to OT – if we're not going to win out, better to not have any points in a loss.

Expect the lineup to remain the same from Winnipeg, with Korpisalo facing Marc-Andre Fleury in goal:

Game Notes:

• In this winning streak, the Senators have beaten much better teams than the Minnesota Wild. Will Minny break the streak or will the Sens continue to sewer their draft lottery odds?
• The Tkaptain comes into this one with eight points in his last five games. Four of those five games were multi-point efforts. It's unlikely a coincidence that the Sens' captain is playing at this level and the Senators are on a five game winning streak.
• Joonas Korpisalo has occupied the net for four of the five wins on this streak, posting a .924 SV% in those four starts.
• How comfortable are you with that forward group next season? I'd definitely look to slot Norris somewhere on the wing, with Zack Ostapchuk in the 4C role. Then look for another Top-9 option to replace Dominik Kubalik.
• I fully expect Tim Stützle to have a much stronger season next year with a better-run power-play, but as of right now, Jake Sanderson is the best player from the 2020 NHL Draft. He makes transitioning the puck between zones look so easy that it's difficult to stop and acknowledge that level of ability, let alone in a 21-year-old blueliner.
• Though Brock Faber is making things a bit interesting. The 45th-pick of the 2020 NHL draft has 41 points in 73 games as a rookie, albeit with the advantage of playing more minutes, and his offensive and defensive impacts aren't as good as Sanderson's.
• It's an 8:00 pm EST start tonight, available on RDS2, TSN5, and TSN 1200.

Stats: