Game 15 preview: Ottawa Senators @ Vancouver Canucks

The Ottawa Senators will venture into the vast and dark wilderness that is the Canadian west when they play the Canucks in Vancouver tonight. The Senators are coming off a disappointing 5-3 loss at home to Toronto, but as Taylor Swift would say, Ottawa just has to shake, shake, shake, shake it off (<3 you Taylor!).

Erik Condra and Patrick Wiercioch will be healthy scratches again (sigh) and Colin Greening will be replaced by Alex Chiasson. Craig Anderson will start in goal, Vancouver will go with Ryan Miller.

Here are the lines and pairings for Ottawa from Dean Brown.

Ottawa

MacArthur - Turris - Chiasson
Michalek - Zibanejad - Ryan
Smith - Legwand - Neil
Hoffman - Lazar - Stone

Phillips - Karlsson
Cowen - Ceci
Borowiecki - Gryba

Anderson (starter)
Lehner

Some notes for tonight:

• The Senators have yet to lose three games in a row this season.
• For all the criticism about Erik Karlsson against Toronto, I thought he actually had a good game overall. He made a couple of mistakes that ended up in the net and that is what will be remembered, but he tied a season high with seven shots on goal and generally helped keep the Senators out of the defensive zone when he was on the ice.
• Very disappointing again to see Patrick Wiercioch sit. I guess haters are going to hate, hate, hate though.
• Alex Chiasson is near the bottom in the entire league among regular forwards in 5-on-5 Corsi relative.
• The Senators are at least regaining their offensive game, moving into the top 10 in the league in shots per game. If they can keep that up, above average goaltending just might drag them into the playoffs.
• With tonight being the 15th game of the season, Ottawa is currently one point out of the last playoff spot. The Leafs are one point ahead and have played a game more than Ottawa.
• After this three game western road trip, Ottawa has a pretty tough schedule with two games against St. Louis, as well as games against Detroit, Nashville and Tampa Bay in the rest of the month.
• Marc Methot is not likely to play in November according to Paul MacLean.
• Don't look now, but Mark Stone and Mike Hoffman are tied with Erik Karlsson for second place in the team goal scoring race.
• Bobby Ryan has pledged $1,000 to the Sens Foundation for every goal Kyle Turris scores tonight.

Here are some stats from last season for the two teams tonight. All stats are from NHL.com except Corsi and Fenwick are from naturalstattrick.com