As they take on the Pittsburgh Penguins Saturday night, the Senators will dress three defencemen who were playing in the American Hockey League last week.
As they take on the Pittsburgh Penguins Saturday night, the Senators will dress three defencemen who were playing in the American Hockey League last week.
When the Ottawa Senators finished training camp, they still had seven defencemen on the roster. Tonight in Pittsburgh, only three of them will be in the lineup.
Last Wednesday, Artem Zub took a puck near the ear and hasn't played since. Jacob Bernard-Docker was the first Belleville call-up to replace him.
On Thursday on Long Island, the club lost Erik Brannstrom indefinitely with a concussion and Thomas Chabot for six weeks with a hand fracture. On Friday night, the Sens recalled rookies Nikolas Matinpalo and Tyler Kleven.
Interestingly, Max Guenette was the seventh defenceman coming out of camp, leading to speculation he had made the NHL team. But with the Senators right at the salary cap, they couldn't afford to carry seven D, so Guenette was sent down.
Now, in just over a week, three NHL defencemen have been hurt up in Ottawa, and Guenette has been passed over three times.
Matinpalo is 25 and played this season in the Finnish Elite League. The right-shot blueliner checks in at 6-foot-2, 202 pounds, and had 16 points in 51 games with 20 penalty minutes. The Senators signed him to a one-year deal shortly after seeing him at the 2023 World Hockey Championships.
Kleven, 21, was signed to a three-year, entry-level deal in March after three years at the University of North Dakota. He's one of four players (Tim Stutzle, Jake Sanderson, Ridly Greig) from a lucrative 2000 Ottawa draft who'll be in the Sens lineup tonight.
Of course, the latest two call-ups are only made possible by Chabot being out for next four-to-six weeks. If he were only out short-term, he obviously wouldn't be eligible for LTIR and the cap relief that comes with it. If that were the case, the Senators probably would have had to move a player in a salary dump, just to be able to ice a full lineup Saturday night.