The Brothers Tkachuk lead Ottawa and Florida into battle Monday at the Canadian Tire Centre.
After the Ottawa Senators' three-game winning streak hit a wall Friday night against the New York Islanders, head coach D.J. Smith decided to go back to the drawing board at Sunday's practice, shuffling every single one of his forward lines.
Based on what we saw on Sunday, here are the probable Senators lines for Monday vs the Florida Panthers (7pm, Canadian Tire Centre, Sportsnet, TVAS):
Senators' Probable Lines
Tkachuk-Stützle-Giroux
Joseph-Norris-Batherson
Kubalik-Chartier-Tarasenko
Kelly-Highmore-MacEwen
Sanderson-Zub
Chychrun-Bernard-Docker
Brannstrom-Hamonic
Unless Smith gets all sentimental that it's Anton Forsberg's 31st birthday today, Joonas Korpisalo is expected to start, which would be his first action in 11 days. Korpisalo has been sidelined by an undisclosed injury. Sergei Bobrovsky will start for Florida.
Family Reunion: The game "features" the battle of the Tkachuks, although the battle never really translates to a good post-game story line since the brothers never actually butt heads on the ice. But if Brady, for example, gets into it with one of Matthew's linemates, then one of Brady's linemates – whoever's the closest – can count on some immediate negative reinforcement from Matthew. And vice versa.
What He Said: The Sens held an optional game-day skate on Monday morning. Afterward, Smith was asked whether the Panthers, the 2022 President's Trophy winners and the 2023 Stanley Cup Finalists Eastern champs, are a measuring stick game for the Sens.
"On any even given night, they're as good as anybody in the National Hockey League," Smith said. "They're deep. Their defence joins the rush, but they also give you no time.
"For us, we've had enough time to digest after Sweden. We didn't play very well in the last game. We've had a couple of good practices and this is going to be a really good game."
Panthers Probable Lineup:
Evan Rodrigues – Aleksander Barkov – Sam Reinhart
Carter Verhaeghe – Sam Bennett – Matthew Tkachuk
Eetu Luostarinen – Anton Lundell – Nick Cousins
Jonah Gadjovich – Kevin Stenlund – Ryan Lomberg
Gustav Forsling – Aaron Ekblad
Niko Mikkola - Brandon Montour
Oliver-Ekman Larsson – Dmitry Kulikov
Sergei Bobrovsky
Anthony Stolarz
Eight Isn't Enough: The Panthers' are 2nd in the Atlantic at 12-7-1 while the Senators probably have armchair numerologists drooling, standing 8th at 8-8. For the record, we looked it up on a random numerology site, and seeing eights everywhere is supposedly encouraging. For what it's worth.
By the Way: Tonight is Hockey Fights Cancer Night at the CTC and new Senators' owner Michael Andlauer has announced he will match up to $100,000 in fan contributions tonight.