Game 66 preview: Ottawa Senators @ Arizona Coyotes

The surging (!!!) Ottawa Senators will look for a season high fifth straight win when they visit the Arizona Coyotes tonight. The Senators won 5-2 in Dallas last night and could pull ahead of the Montréal Canadiens in points per game with a win and a regulation loss for the Canadiens.

The Coyotes are pretty entrenched in 29th place overall. They are 14 points ahead of 30th place Colorado and eight points behind 28th place Detroit. There are no playoff, no tanking, so the games literally mean nothing for them but they do have a half-decent home record winning 14 out of 32.

With the Senators playing last night, there will obviously be no morning skate today. If Kyle Turris can't go tonight, then the Senators will likely go with seven defencemen again and Mike Condon will probably start.

Here are the likely lines:

Burrows - Brassard - Stone
Dzingel - Smith and Hoffman/Stone
Hoffman - Pageau - Pyatt
Stålberg - Kelly - Wingels

Methot - Karlsson
Phaneuf - Ceci
Borowiecki - Wideman
Claesson

Condon (starter)
Anderson

Some notes for tonight:

• Mike Hoffman has seven points in seven games since missing two games due to injury.
• With Viktor Stålberg's goal last night, the new guys have now combined for five goals.
• Five goals last night and no Erik points? Enough to make Adnan weep.
• Ottawa was outshot 17-2 in the third period last night. Although with a big lead and a game the following night, you could excuse them for letting up.
• Erik Karlsson played 18:23 after the first two periods and 5:52 in the third.
• The Senators didn't have too many pretty goals last night did they? Seemed like a night everything was working for them.
• Ottawa's magic number to clinch a playoff spot is 26 at most. The Leafs and Bruins can get to a maximum of 106 points and with Toronto having a game left against Boston, it guarantees that one of them will be at 105 or lower.
• Only the New York Rangers have more away wins than Ottawa among the Eastern Conference teams.
• The over/under for the Senators was 80.5 points in preseason. With a point tonight, they can pass that with 16 games to spare.
• Craig Anderson's 93.1 save percentage is second in the NHL this season. It is no coincidence that his return has resulted in an increase in points. Ottawa has won 20 out of the 29 games Anderson has started this season.
• Stålberg has already matched Chris Neil's offensive output for the season while Burrows has already passed it./

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