Ottawa Senators at Chicago Blackhawks 7PM Eastern/6 Central TVA/RSN/CSN Chicago/SportsNet
THE BUZZ
Another good measuring stick, the Senators beat Chicago in overtime a month ago in Ottawa. This team is a lot like the one the Hawks just faced in Colorado: young, fast and explosive. The Senators can score, but they also struggle at times to keep the puck out of their own net.
The Blackhawks played at a high pace Thursday night in Colorado, and still played reasonably well defensively, aside from one notable breakdown late in the third period that allowed Colorado to push the game to OT.
A couple of encouraging signs for Chicago of late have been the play of rookie D Erik Gustafsson, and a new third line featuring Andrew Desjardins, Teuvo Teravainen and Philip Danault.
Yesterday's blog featured an analysis of the Hawks' pretty atrocious 5-on-5 numbers to this point of the season. As the numbers below will illustrate, Ottawa is a pretty good 5-on-5 team—just not very good on special teams. And they take a lot of penalties, averaging 12.2 PIM per game. So special teams should be an advantage that the Hawks can exploit—but it would also be a positive sign for Chicago to perform well at even strength.
THE NUMBERS
GF/GA Ottawa 2.84/2.92 Chicago 2.74/2.49
PP Ottawa 18.5% Chicago 23.8%
PK Ottawa 76.3% Chicago 81.1%
PROJECTED LINEUPS
Ottawa
Smith Turris Stone Hoffman Zibanejad Ryan McCormick Pageau Chiasson Prince Lazar Neil
Claesson Karlsson Wiercioch Borowiecki Methot Wideman
Anderson
Chicago
Shaw Toews Hossa Panarin Anisimov Kane Desjardins Danault Teravainen Mashinter Rasmussen Garbutt
Hjalmarsson Keith Gustafsson Seabrook van Riemsdyk Rozsival
Crawford
I'll recap tomorrow.
JJ