After scraping by with a narrow 2-1 win over the lowly Buffalo Sabres on Tuesday night, the Ottawa Senators step up in weight class to face one of the most talented, albeit injury riddled teams in the league and a nemisis of sorts.
The Penguins and Sidney Crosby come to town on the heels of a 4-1 win over the Red Wings in Pittsburgh. Crosby is pointless in his last 2 games and trails Patrick Kane by 6 points for the NHL scoring lead.
In goal, the Penguins could go with backup Thomas Greiss, after Marc-Andre Fleury played last night in Pittsburgh, although with 2 days off following this game and a neck and neck race with the Islanders for first in the Metropolitan division, Fleury could get right back in. He has allowed just 1 goal in his last three games after posting back to back shutouts in Alberta last week.
For Ottawa, Robin Lehner once again gets the call between the pipes, looking to win back to back games for the first time since Oct 11th and 18th, his first two starts of the season. Ottawa as a club hasn't won back to back since Dec 29th and Jan 3rd.
From the skate yesterday, it seems that Mike Hoffman will be back with Bobby Ryan and Mika Zibanejad, while CLarke MacArthur was skating with Curtis Lazar and Jean-Gabriel Pageau, but it wouldn't surprise me if Pageau ends up being the scratch that he was supposed to be for the past two games before sudden illnesses knocked others out of the lineup in his favor when the lineup is finally set.
Cody Ceci will get back in, with likely Patrick Wiercioch or Eric Gryba coming out, although there have been whispers (Don Brennan FWIW) that it could be Jared Cowen as the coach expands his rotation.
TRADE WINDS BLOWING
The trade deadline season officially kicked off yesterday with the Sabres-Jets blockbuster involving among others Evander Kane and Tyler Myers. The Sabres then shipped Jonas Enroth to Dallas for Anders Lindback.
That Kane-Myers deal will probably be the biggest deal you see before March 2nd, meaning the TSN guys will have probably an analyst for every deal on March 2nd, with a lot of time to fill in gaps.
What does this mean for the Senators? The fact is, if they want anything with real value they will have to give up a core piece, and the salary dumping that most fans seem to want won't exactly fetch a king's ransom. Legwand, Michalek, Neil, Wiercioch might go to help give other teams depth, but won't bring a ton back so the rebuild will have to continue from within.