The Ottawa Senators are straddling a fine line at the moment and they need a big win tonight to wrap up this segment of a road-heavy schedule, and it has to come at the hands of one of the teams that is among the best in the league right now. It is also a team they can look to for optimism about getting out of their current slump.

The Columbus Blue Jackets sit atop the Metropolitan Division, with a 14-7-1 record. After struggling for a four game stretch in early November (0-3-1), the Blue Jackets have been lights out in their last 5 games, winning all of them and allowing just 4 goals against in those 5 games.

Sergei Bobrovsky has been playing lights out, with two shutouts and two save of the year candidates in recent games. For a team that is struggling at the moment to score goals, Bobrovsky isn't the guy they would prefer to be facing, but with this being the Blue Jackets' only game in a four day span, it is unlikely that Joonas Korpisalo will face the Senators.

The Senators are in the midst of a four game slide of their own, and this will be the first of a back to back and second of a three in four night stretch. They will return home to face the Islanders tomorrow night, and they will want to return for their lone home game in the course of three weeks on a winning note.

Sometimes you go on a losing streak and there are games you deserve to win, but just fall on the short end. That has not been the case in this streak for the Senators, and you would be hard pressed to make an argument that they have played well enough to have deserved more than the one point they have snagged in the last four games. That is the insanity I stated in the title, because not one player could look in the mirror and say that they did all they could in any one of the last 4 games to help their team win.

Ottawa put Chris DiDomenico on waivers yesterday, which clears the way for Wednesday's waiver pickup Gabriel Dumont to possibly make his Senators debut. Dumont has a history with Guy Boucher and Mike Hoffman dating back to junior. Dumont played for most of two seasons in Drummondville while Boucher was the coach and Hoffman was a player. He also joined a Boucher-coached Hamilton Bulldogs team for the 2010 playoffs after being eliminated from the QMJHL playoffs.

He has played 64 NHL games over the past 6 seasons, with 3 goals and four assists while bouncing between the minors and NHL. He played 39 games in Tampa last season, and was pointless in 7 NHL games this year with the Lightning.

Dumont won't be a difference maker by any stretch, and it will fall on the likes of Erik Karlsson, Mark Stone, Matt Duchene and Mike Hoffman to start getting the offense back in gear, and for Craig Anderson to put in one of those "beast-mode" performances that he is capable of in stealing a game. Anderson hasn't been terrible, at least in terms of allowing the bad goal, but he hasn't been able to make the key saves the struggling team has needed at the key time to help end the skid they are on.

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