After a pair of 5-2 wins on the weekend, the Senators continue their homestand Wednesday night against the Washington Capitals.
The Matchup: Washington Capitals (1-1, seventh in the Metro) at Ottawa Senators 2-1, third in the Atlantic)
Faceoff: Wednesday, October 18th, 2023, 7 pm (Sportsnet, RDS)
What's New? Not the Capitals. They begin the new season with one of the oldest core groups in the league. Alex Ovechkin, the Great Eight, is now 38. Nicklas Backstrom is 35, T.J. Oshie is 36, Max Pacioretty is 34, John Carlson is 33, Evgeny Kuznetsov is 31, and Tom Wilson is 29.
To varying degrees, all of them dealt with injuries last season – most notably Backstrom, Carlson and Wilson who all missed half the season, along with Pacioretty, who played only five games for Carolina.
Joel Edmundson and Pacioretty are the free-agent newcomers, but neither will play Wednesday night. Edmundson broke his hand and won't return until next month. And Pacioretty continues to recover from a second Achilles tendon injury. In his days in Montreal, Pacioretty always seemed to find a way to get three breakaways every game versus Ottawa, so the Senators won't miss that.
The Capitals got their first win of the season Monday night, beating the Calgary Flames 3-2 in a shootout. We're getting reports that one of Washington's shootout attempts from that game just wrapped up about an hour ago. Evgeny Kuznetsov's incredibly slow approach, while wildly successful, continues to irritate opposing teams and fans.
Speaking of Slow: The Senators are determined to avoid another slow start to their season. They hope to keep their momentum going after a pair of 5-2 wins over the Flyers and Lightning. They've had notoriously bad starts in recent years and banking wins early will allow them some room for error later in the season. Last year, after a 6-12-1 start, they had none, and couldn't recover from a disastrous 5 game road trip in March.
Bench Bosses: Coaching-wise, it's a battle of two old Leafs assistants who arrived in their nation's capital as rookies. Smith is now in his fifth season in Ottawa, still trying to get to the playoffs. After two years as Sheldon Keefe's assistant in Toronto, Spencer Carbery was hired in May to run the bench in Washington.
Smith did a little shuffling at practice Tuesday. Jake Sanderson quarterbacked the first unit power play and, while that's historically been Thomas Chabot's job, that may be a role Sanderson never surrenders.
What About Now? Josh Norris remains day-to-day with that incessant shoulder problem, but Smith says he might return any game now. With Tim Stutzle missing practice for a maintenance day, Norris got a chance to skate on the top power play unit. *UPDATE: Smith confirmed at Wednesday practice that Norris is scheduled to start against the Capitals.
His probable linemate, Drake Batherson, heaped on some foreshadowing after practice, certainly making it sound like there was a chance that Norris might play his first game in nine months tonight.