Silver Nuggets: Battle for Florida
The Ottawa Senators return to action tonight when they host the New Jersey Devils. Ottawa sits three points behind New Jersey in the fight to finish sixth and earn the right to likely play the Florida Panthers. After tonight, the Senators and Devils will play one more time on the final day of the season in New Jersey.
A win tonight and the gap is down to one point (would also bring them within a point of Boston). A regulation loss and the Senators are five points behind New Jersey with eight games to go and stay three points behind Boston. Needless to say, tonight is a big game on both fronts.
Tonight's game is the fourth last home game of the season. The Senators host the Penguins on Saturday, the Hurricanes on 3 April and the Bruins on 5 April.
Links after the jump.
Here are today's links:
- Zenon Konopka will return to the lineup for Bobby Butler. This cleary means that Anton Volchenkov will now be too scared to hit any Ottawa Senators right? (Daniel Slater)
- Ben Bishop will start for Ottawa and Johan Hedberg for New Jersey. (Brent Wallace)
- Five out of the eight predict a win tonight. Monsieur Raaymakers said 3-2 Ottawa. (Senators Extra)
- Craig Anderson might return by the weekend. (Senators Extra)
- Paul MacLean is trying his best to not look ahead to the playoffs. (Ottawa Sun)
- A few interesting Senators related thoughts in Elliotte Friedman's 30 thoughts including Jared Cowen having his skating filmed in practise, the Erik Karlsson/Ben Bishop mixup, the hits Karlsson has taken as well as Karlsson changing his shooting strategy from earlier in the season. (CBC)
- Lastly, Robin Lehner told me that Erik Karlsson should win the Norris Trophy. Do you want to disagree with Robin? (Robin Lehner)