After an emotional and successful three game road trip, the Ottawa Senators return to the friendly confines of Canadian Tire Centre to face a foe that for some reason usually seems to give them fits, the Carolina Hurricanes.
Expect it to be another emotionally charged night as the hometown fans will have their first opportunity to show their support for Nicholle Anderson through their cheering of husband Craig, whose back to back shutouts in Vancouver and Edmonton sandwiched the announcement that Nicholle has been diagnosed with cancer.
The performance on the ice while dealing with the adversity off it resulted in Anderson being named the NHL's first star of the week yesterday, and I would anticipate he will be between the pipes when the puck drops tonight.
Carolina comes to town sitting in dead last in the Eastern Conference with a 2-4-2 record, and a 1-3-2 record on the road, where they have spent a majority of their time in this early season.
The big bright spot for the Canes has been the play of Jeff Skinner, who has 11 points in 7 games and Victor Rask (10 points in 8 games).
Both of these teams have scored at a 3 G/GP clip, while the Hurricanes have allowed 3.75 G/GP (4th highest in the league, while Anderson's shutout in Edmonton dropped Ottawa's average goals against to 3.13.
Ottawa will want to avoid giving the Hurricanes unnecessary opportunities on the power play, as they have cashed in on one of every four chances so far this season, and they also have a top 10 penalty kill unit at over 85%.
Once again the primary focus will be on Anderson in the Ottawa net (and I am assuming he will get the start). His performance on Sunday night was special and has to rank as one of the biggest moments in franchise history. Expecting a repeat of that is probably too much to ask, but his putting forth a solid effort with support from the players in front of him would go a long way to banking two points.
There aren't a lot of games that you look at and say that the Senators should win. This is one of them, and you can ill afford to leave points on the table from games like this one. It is a road-weary team in the midst of a rebuild with young players all over the lineup and have been getting sub-par goaltending so far from Cam Ward and Eddie Lack.
The key will be to take the emotion created by the crowd, one that might be considered to be usually void of said emotion, and use it to overcome the dreaded "first home game after a long road trip" doldrums.
Puck drop is just after 7:30 PM on TSN5.