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Game Day: Senators @ Blues - Opening up the second half |
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The Senators open the second half of their season with the first of a three game road trip in St. Louis.
Coming off a disappointing loss to the rival Maple Leafs, the Senators are in a race with the Leafs and Bruins for the second and third playoff spots in the Atlantic Division. Tied in points with the blue and white, and three points back of the Bruins, now with six games in hand have both Ontario teams in good position to meet in the first round.
Now, as I have said before, those games in hand on the Bruins (and the 4 on each of the Lightning and Panthers as well) don't mean a thing if you don't put some wins together, and that means avoiding multi-game losing streaks by following up a loss on Saturday with a win tonight.
The Blues occupy the third seed in the Central Division, but like the Senators they are having trouble finding consistency and have allowed more goals than they have scored.
The Senators want to avoid turning this one into a special teams affair, because St. Louis' power play is ranked 8th in the league and its penalty kill is 5th. So obviously Ottawa's best chance is to keep playing 5 on 5 as much as possible, because their own special teams are inconsistent at best. While Ottawa' power play is 3 for its last 7, it is also 3 for its last 21, depending on whether you are an optimist or a pessimist and want to take a short or long view. The Leafs scored on their only power play opportunity on Saturday, but killed off all 13 changes against over the previous 5 games.
Obviously the key to stopping the Blues is to shut down Vladimir Tarasenko, who leads his team in goals (20) assists (24) and needless to say, points (44). The next highest scorer on the Blues, Robby Fabbri, is 16 points behind Tarasenko.
That doesn't mean you can focus solely on the skilled Russian, because they also have a talented group with the likes of Alex Steen, Jaden Schwartz, David Perron and Paul Stastny up front as well as Kevin Shattenkirk and Alex Pietrangelo on the blue line.
But for a team coached by Ken Hitchcock, there are a lot of minus players looking down the roster, which is something that you wouldn't expect. But I guess that is what you get when your #1 goalie, Jake Allen has a .900 save percentage, which is near the bottom of the league in terms of regular goalies.
St. Louis can be a tough team to play against, but this is certainly a winnable game. It just depends on whether the Dr. Jeckyll Senators, who beat the Penguins last Thursday show up, or if it is the Mr. Hyde version that took to the ice on Saturday against the Leafs. If it is the former, the Sens can play with anyone, while if the latter rears its ugly head, it would take a stellar effort from Mike Condon if the Senators are going to come away with points in this one. The problem is, you never know which one is going to show up.
I guess that is why they play the games.
Ottawa Senators Blogger • 
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