A few thoughts in preparation for tonight's game against Chicago.
(1) Paul MacLean's lineup should somewhat resemble the one he deployed in Tuesday's shootout loss to Florida. It's possible that Mika Zibanejad will draw back in, though no decision has been made on that front. As for the actual tweaks: expect Chris Phillips (injured) to again sit for Patrick Wiercioch, and Craig Anderson (in) will return from his injury to relieve back-up Robin Lehner.
It's a test for Ottawa both mentally and physically tonight. The games don't matter anymore, but the team can't afford to mail-it-in. These games still matter to Chicago with respect to seeding and what-not, and they're going to bring their best effort. Ottawa's already at-risk of being blitzed out of the building by the Blackhawks on their best day; showing up and punching the clock will likely result in a blowout.
These two teams played a wild one back on October 29th, a 6-5 victory for the Blackhawks at the United Center. Territorially, the game was fairly even, though Ottawa had no answer for Jonathan Toews (3G/1A) or Andrew Shaw (2G/0A).
We'll see what happens tonight.
(2) I posed this question earlier on Twitter, but I figured it's worth dropping here, too. If you were to hand out an award to Ottawa's best forward this year, who would it go to?
Judging by the responses from this morning, it seems to me that it's a two-man competition between Clarke MacArthur and Kyle Turris. I tend to agree with the people here. I think MacArthur's been Ottawa's best in the offensive zone and neutral zone, but I think Turris has the slightest of edges over MacArthur in the defensive third.
I don't think there's a wrong answer here between the two of them, if you're looking at the full season. I think, gun to my head, I'd take MacArthur. But it's excruciatingly close.
I dropped a poll here to get a better estimate, but leave your reasoning in the comments.
(3) Lastly, something to chew on with respect to the playoff and lottery race in both conferences. Unfortunately, neither really matters for Ottawa, with their playoff hopes dead and their first-round pick with Anaheim.
Before Thursday's games (so, sorry, the numbers are exact as of yesterday -- not today), I went and tabulated each team's remaining strength of schedule based on the average Score-Adjusted Fenwick% of their opposition. So, your average strength of schedule would be 50%. At the poles are teams like Washington (whose average opponent carries a ridiculous 52% of the play) and New York (whose average opponent carries ~ 47% of the play, which is terrible). Kind of useful if you're forecasting playoff projections, I guess.
This summer, I'm going to work on a more intricate strength of schedule formula that takes into account back-to-back situations, where we know even-strength play tails off wildly, and home/away -- where there's roughly a two or three percentage point difference.
So, this is fairly raw, but way more telling than anything you can find around the internet right now on the strength of schedule front.
Thanks for reading!