Game #16 Hub: Ottawa Senators vs Philadelphia Flyers

The winning streak. The mark of any good hockey team, in which they win a game, win another game, before following that up with winning yet another game. We've seen a few in recent memory, but not nearly enough, from the Ottawa Senators.

The reality of sports is that regardless of the quality of play, wins and losses are solely determined by the scoreboard. They dominated the Toronto Maple Leafs on Tuesday for 2 points, but the result is identical to a team winning by a goal after being outshot 41-17. And that progress can be undone by the next game. That's why they can't be satisfied with such an effort for long: it's only 1/82nd of the picture.

Tonight, they're back in the nation's capital to take on the Philadelphia Flyers, a team that's really good at killing penalties, and not much else.

Here are the projected lines:

Game Notes:

• The Flyers are back to reality after nearly making a Cinderella run to the playoffs last season. The overall play has fallen off, though, in addition to their stellar penalty kill, they don't allow many shots. They did beat the Sharks in a shootout on Monday, but is that really an accomplishment?
• After a whole lot of nothing to start the year, Mike Amadio has goals in back-to-back games, including a huge equalizer against Boston that could wind up being the turning point of the season. He's spent a bit of time in the top six and hasn't been effective, but the return of Shane Pinto should allow both him and Noah Gregor to be a bit more effective than we'd be used to seeing from them.
• Tim Stützle needs some faceoff training. The fact that he's been incredible at center despite a 29.5% success rate in the circle is astounding and leaves you wondering what could be if he were at a clip nearing 50% instead. At least his winger tonight Claude Giroux is 58.9% on 197 draws so far this year.
• Despite being shelled in Artem Zub's absence, Travis Hamonic's numbers have improved alongside Tyler Kleven on the third pair. I still maintain that rotating him and Jacob Bernard-Docker more often would allow both of them to be more effective, but I'm not complaining about a third pairing that doesn't move the needle in either direction.
• Tonight's 7:00 pm EST game will be aired on TSN5, RDS2, and TSN 1200.

Stats

• from NHL.com and NaturalStatTrick.com