Ottawa shuffles defensemen and goalies as they try to close a three-point gap on the Montreal Canadiens.
The Ottawa Senators and Montreal Canadiens, two teams that seem to be on the rise in the Atlantic Division, will meet at the Bell Centre on Saturday night.
The Canadiens are off to an excellent early start with an 8-3-0 record, but the Senators are just three points behind at 6-5-1. The entire division is clumped up, with only five points separating first-place Montreal and last-place Toronto, so this meeting between the Sens and Habs is a big one — or as big as it gets for the first of November.
Back home in Ottawa, a lot of Senators fans may need wrist braces on Sunday to protect newly sprained thumbs from furiously working their TV remotes. The city's sports fans will also be keeping a close eye on the Toronto Blue Jays, who play Game 7 of the World Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers (8 pm) in a winner-take-all to end the baseball season.
The Senators are coming off a 4-3 shootout victory over the Calgary Flames on Thursday. Despite the win, it wasn’t a great performance, so head coach Travis Green has opted to make some lineup changes.
After finally getting a start against the Flames on Thursday, defenseman Jordan Spence will be back in the press box. When asked this morning by the media why Spence was coming out and Nikolas Matinpalo was going back in, Green was at his descriptive best.
“Because that’s what we wanted,” Green said.
He later threw the media a bone, volunteering a little more information on the decision.
“We have seven D that we like. These are not easy decisions to make. Sometimes you’re going to make those decisions based on your opponent and the type of game. They have an offensive squad that can score, and we’re going to have to play big around our net – ”
Humorously, Green was then interrupted by a reporter who urgently needed to ask a question that Green had just finished answering.
The Senators also continue to make sure that backup goalie Leevi Meriläinen stays sharp. With Linus Ullmark set to start on Saturday, Ottawa doesn’t play again until Thursday in Boston, so Meriläinen has been sent down to Belleville and will likely start on Saturday night in Syracuse. Meanwhile, Hunter Shepard has been called up and will serve as Ullmark’s backup in Montreal.
The Senators and Canadiens have a clear dislike for each other, and that was highly evident in their first preseason game this season in Quebec City. The two clubs combined for 150 penalty minutes as the Canadiens won 5–0 in a fight-filled game. Not only did the Sens get pummeled on the scoreboard, but they lost most of the fights as well.
That prompted the Senators to order another Big Mac. They traded for NHL heavyweight Kurtis MacDermid, acquired from the New Jersey Devils for Zack MacEwen. The following night, the Senators and Habs played another exhibition game with MacDermid in the lineup, and this time they went from 150 penalty minutes to just 14.
As McDermid skates on the fourth line for Ottawa tonight, it will be interesting to see if cooler heads prevail once again. But Canadiens defenseman Arber Xhekaj told the Le Journal de Montréal on Friday that the Habs haven’t forgotten Nick Cousins’ slash on Habs rookie Ivan Demidov, so who knows?
Cousins was fined for the slash, which was a pretty obvious retribution for Florian Xhekaj’s beatdown a minute earlier on Sens rookie Carter Yakemchuk, who wanted no part of him. And that was revenge for something Ottawa did, and so on and so on.
Cousins didn’t dress in the second Sens–Habs preseason rematch, but he’s now playing on Ottawa’s top line, so if the Canadiens want to keep the back-and-forth revenge game going, they’ll have plenty of opportunities.
Here's how the chess pieces lineup on Saturday, as per the league website.
Senators projected lineup
Nick Cousins -- Tim Stutzle -- Drake Batherson
Ridly Greig -- Dylan Cozens -- David Perron
Michael Amadio -- Shane Pinto -- Claude Giroux
Kurtis MacDermid -- Lars Eller -- Fabian Zetterlund
Jake Sanderson -- Artem Zub
Thomas Chabot -- Nick Jensen
Tyler Kleven -- Nikolas Matinpalo
Linus Ullmark
Hunter Shepard
Scratched: Olle Lycksell, Jordan Spence
Injured: Brady Tkachuk (thumb surgery)
Canadiens projected lineup
Cole Caufield -- Nick Suzuki -- Juraj Slafkovsky
Alex Newhook -- Oliver Kapanen -- Ivan Demidov
Josh Anderson -- Jake Evans -- Brendan Gallagher
Kirby Dach -- Joe Veleno -- Zach Bolduc
Mike Matheson -- Noah Dobson
Jayden Struble -- Lane Hutson
Arber Xhekaj -- Alexandre Carrier
Sam Montembeault
Jakub Dobes
Scratched: None
Injured: Kaiden Guhle (lower body), Patrik Laine (lower body)