After losing three straight games to the Tampa Bay Lightning, Philadelphia Flyers, and Colorado Avalanche, it’s game day for the Ottawa Senators as they head to the desert to face off against a struggling Arizona Coyotes team.
16-16-8
Ottawa Senators
VS
16-20-4
Arizona Coyotes
7:00 pm EST
Gila River Arena, Glendale
TV: City
MATCHUP HISTORY
This is the first of two games this season between these two teams. Last year Ottawa and Phoenix both won 4-3 games in overtime against each other, with the home team losing both times.
PLAYERS TO WATCH
Curtis Lazar, – OTT. Lazar is coming back to the Senators as the captain of a gold medal team, and he should have all the confidence in the world. He has missed the last nine games for Ottawa, and I’m sure he’s extremely excited to get back in the lineup. Despite relatively solid play so far in the season, he has had some poor luck in the points department. In due time that should regress back to the mean (in a good way), and I’m sure his confidence after winning a gold medal will help with his game as well. I’m curious to see what he can do in his first game back.
Antoine Vermette, – ARI. The former Senator always seems to kill Ottawa, even though he has only played them five times. However, in those five games he has three goals and four assists, so if anyone is going to score from Arizona’s inept offense, it will most likely be him. He’s having incredible luck this year, as he’s shooting at 17.2%, and his luck may continue in this game.
THREE KEYS TO THE GAME
1. Goaltending- Last game, Craig Anderson and Robin Lehner were not up to par, and they essentially wasted the teams solid effort. As a whole, they have been great this year, and in a game that could be low-scoring, whoever starts needs to be on his game. On the other side, Arizona’s goalies have not been good at all. Mike Smith has a .886 save percentage in 26 games, while the surprising Devan Dubnyk has actually played well with a .918 save percentage. If Smith starts, Ottawa has a chance to wake up the offense against a sup-par goalie.
2. Convert on the powerplay- In the last eight games, Ottawa has amazingly gone 0-28 on the powerplay. I’m not even mad, that’s amazing. Luckily for the Senators, Arizona has a bad penalty kill which ranks 28th in the league at 75.2%. The Coyotes could be the perfect opponent to break the slump. However, I feel like the deployment of the power play and certain positions for forwards on it are an issue, but we’ll see if that’s fixable. Surely if the slump can’t be broken tonight then they have a severe case of cruel unluckiness.
3. Four line attack- It’s no secret that the Coyotes offense isn’t the greatest of all time. They don’t have a whole lot of depth, and that shows in their record. Ottawa has a sort of “scoring by committee” approach, and it looks like for this game there will be at least one scoring threat on each line. I don’t agree with putting Alex Chiasson on the top line and demoting Mark Stone, but nevertheless it does mean that the lineup is more spread out. If Stone is playing against fourth liners like Joe Vitale and Tobias Rieder, I think he will be fine. Perhaps a four line attack will be able to expose Arizona’s weaknesses.
Enjoy the game!