Game 76 Preview and Open Thread: Ottawa Senators versus Florida Panthers

The Ottawa Senators took care of business stifling a very good Tampa Bay team on Thursday and subsequently got no help on Friday night as the Red Wings and Islanders won their games. The Rangers, Blue Jackets, and Canadiens play today, and more importantly the Sens need to steal some points from an ailing Florida team. Ottawa obviously has some major injuries to navigate in Brady Tkachuk and Nick Jensen. For what it's worth, I imagine the Cats desperately miss Matthew Tkachuk, Aleksander Barkov, and Aaron Ekblad. Florida obviously still has absurd depth without said players and home ice advantage certainly comes in handy against such a balanced opposing lineup.

Game Notes:

• So far in the season series, each team has won one game at home. Ottawa could still realistically face Florida in the first round of the playoffs and as Ross discussed last week, the Sens would have their work cut out for them in that case.
• Florida has fallen into a bit of a rut with so many major injuries and have won just one game in regulation in their last ten contests (back on March 13th in Toronto). On the one hand, now seems like a good time to face Florida but also they seem well overdue.
• Injuries notwithstanding, Florida has some of the best five-on-five numbers in the league, a lethal powerplay, and an efficient penalty kill. Sergei Bobrovsky hasn't had a Vezina-type season but has played well enough to let the Panthers trade away Spencer Knight as part of the deal for Seth Jones.
• My obvious and corny take on this game is that if the Sens intend on going into the playoffs with any kind of purpose then they need to play competently even against arguably the best team in the conference.
• TSN1200 reporting that Anton Forsberg starts today.

• Expect Sergei Bobrovsky to start for Florida. Florida ran these lines at practice:

And now we have Ottawa's lines too:

Where to watch/listen: TSN5, RDS, TSN1200 @ 2PM EST

Stats: