The Senators return home from a 1 game road trip for a 1 game homestand before they head off for sunny Florida to finish off the pre-Christmas portion of their schedule.
At the other side of the rink will be the streaky San Jose Sharks. The Sharks have winning streaks of 4 and 6 games so far, and have now won 2 straight on the road after wins in Montreal on Tuesday and Toronto on Thursday. It will be a back to back situation for the Sharks, who had to score 2 in the third to force overtime where Brent Burns forced yet another loss on Jonathan Bernier.
The Sharks have been tremendous on the road, with a 12-5-1 record away from their own barn. Joe Pavelski has taken control of this team, as you can see above he leads his club in goals, assists and points. Little Joe has 5 points in his last 2 games.
The Sharks have had to play without Logan Couture for a majority of the season, to a variety of injuries. After returning from a broken ankle on December 8th, he played just 1 game and a period before leaving with a thigh injury that required surgery to repair an artery and will miss more time.
The Senators will have to keep one eye on Burns, whose OT winner on Thursday was his 11th of the season (2nd in the NHL among defensemen), and 8th even strength goal (leading all NHL defensemen).
After playing against the Leafs on Thursday, Martin Jones will likely get a break tonight and Alex Stalock will probably get the nod in goal for the Sharks. Stalock's numbers haven't been good this season in a backup role (2-4 record, 2.95 GAA, .891 SP) but his lone game against the Senators came over 2 years ago and was a stellar 38 save performance in a 5-2 Sharks win at Canadian Tire Centre, the venue for tonight's tilt. Craig Anderson, after getting his first night off in a month on Wednesday will get back into the net.
After getting off to a slow start at home this season, Ottawa has now improved to an 8-4-4 record and have won 5 of their last 6 at Canadian Tire Centre. The biggest obstacle facing the Senators of late has been their slow starts and brutal first periods. They need to get out of the gate faster and be ready at 7:30, and not waiting until 8:30 or 9:00 to get their legs moving at full speed.
Senators sniper Mike Hoffman had 6 points in two games against the Sharks last season, 3 goals and 3 assists so you have to think he is chomping at the bit to get this one going.
Curtis Lazar's status will be a game-day decision, suffering from a sore neck following the check from Tom Wilson that resulted in a match penalty but no further discipline (and rightly so). Lazar was adamant that it wasn't a concussion but he still might be held out. If so, Shane Prince will likely finally get an opportunity to get back into the lineup.
Whether Lazar plays or not, the key to getting a good start might just be to send out a line of Neil, Borowiecki and Dziurzynski to go out and hit anything that moves to get the building and the team into the game early. Like it or not, if they are going to play you might as well let them do their job and try to get some early momentum. Even if they get scored on, that doesn't change things much from the way they have started of late, they would just be getting it out of the way a little earlier. Its hasn't been necessarily the first shift that has been the problem, but getting some energy going with that strategy is something that they haven't tried, and since nothing else has worked in the last couple of weeks, why not?