As the Senators prepare for Utah, head coach Travis Green has made some intriguing changes in his top six.
When it comes to his line combinations, Ottawa Senators head coach Travis Green has never been shy to tinker and experiment. But when everyone is healthy, he doesn't often mess with his top three centres: Tim Stützle, Dylan Cozens, and Shane Pinto.
That changed on Wednesday.
As the Senators (20-16-5) prepare for their game in Salt Lake City against the Utah Mammoth (20-20-3), the team announced its projected line combinations, and Cozens was suddenly a right winger on the top line with Stützle in the middle and Drake Batherson on his off-wing.
That allows Green to move Pinto up to play with Brady Tkachuk and Fabian Zetterlund on the second line. Or is that the top line? Tough to say.
Ridly Greig has returned to the centre position a lot this season due to Pinto’s recent injury. But now he gets to play his natural position even with an almost fully healthy lineup.
Batherson says this will be a little different.
“Yeah, no, obviously I’ve played with Tim before and Dylan,” Batherson said. “But never with Dylan on the wing. So it’ll be a different look, I think, and yeah, we’ll see how it goes. But they’re two good players, and hopefully it clicks.”
He and Cozens are both righties, so Batherson will play on his off-wing. He's used to that, generally stationed there in the power play setup.
Here’s how the Green chess pieces are expected to align in Utah on Wednesday night.
Green, as he does, downplayed the switch. In fact, when asked by Sens host Jackson Starr to provide info on the starting goalie and lineup notes, Green could have volunteered that he’d made a really interesting switch with Cozens and Pinto, but he stuck to the basics.
“Leevi Meriläinen in net, same lineup,” Green said. “I liked our game last game. We’ve got to do it again and get the results we want.”
Of course, it is the same lineup of players, but it is a major switch in the line combinations. Starr pressed the issue after observing the combinations at practice and wanted to know what Green was hoping to see out of the Stützle line with Cozens now on his wing.
Again, Green continued with his “nothing to see here” tone.
“It’s nothing out of (Cozens’) normal game. He’s capable of playing the wing. All our centremen are capable of playing all over. It should be a good combination.”
Sigh.
Despite being deployed the last two seasons as a third-line centre, Pinto doesn’t lack for ice time, checking in this season with an average of 19 minutes per game. But moving up in the order to play with Tkachuk on the second line will mean more five-on-five minutes and higher offensive potential. But with great potential, comes great expectations. Or something like that.
On the back end, despite being named to Team Finland’s Olympic team this week, Nik Matinpalo continues to be the odd man out. He’s still looking to play his first game of 2026 and is expected to be a healthy scratch for the Senators’ fourth straight game.
Goaltending has been the hot subject on social media, podcasts, and talk radio over the past two days. Meriläinen will be trying to bounce back after being yanked from a 5–3 loss to the Detroit Red Wings on Monday night. He allowed three goals on eight shots and was replaced in the second period by Hunter Shepard.
On Tuesday morning, Shepard was sent back to the Belleville Senators and Mads Søgaard was recalled. Søgaard was named to Team Denmark on Wednesday, joining Sens forward Lars Eller, who is part of the preliminary six announced several months ago. Of the three goalies who've played the bulk of the games in Belleville (Søgaard, Shepard, and Jackson Parsons), it's Søgaard who has both the worst goals-against and the worst save percentage.
The Senators are at a point where they’re probably more than prepared to hand the net over to anybody who can get in a groove, regardless of age, contract, or where they supposedly sit on the depth chart.
Meriläinen currently owns a 6-7-0 record, a 3.49 goals-against average, and an .869 save percentage. This will only be his fifth start since Linus Ullmark stepped away from the team to deal with a personal matter.
As for Utah, they’re home from a three-game swing in the East where they went 2-1 against the Islanders, Devils, and Rangers, and now come home to kick off a seven-game homestand. Former Sens assistant coach André Tourigny, now in his fifth year as Arizona/Utah head coach, says he wants his team to guard against the tendency for teams to have a sluggish start to their homestand.
“Coming back from a long trip, the first game is the one where you need to make sure you put all your energy, all your focus, and make sure you double down,” Tourigny told NHL.com. “Ottawa is a team that will play hard. They rely a lot on their forecheck, their physicality. They have defensemen who can skate really well with the puck and without the puck. They’re tight defensively — they’re one of the tightest teams in expected goals against. It’s a good challenge for us, since it will be a hard-fought game. It will be fun.”
The Senators won the first of two matchups between these two clubs, 4–2, in November.
Face off is 9:30 pm (TSN 5).
Steve Warne is the Ottawa Senators site editor here at The Hockey News. He's covered the Senators since day one, first as Sports Director for Rogers Radio on AM 1310 and FM 105, then as the long-time host of the morning show at TSN 1200 radio.
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