Game 79 preview: Ottawa Senators @ Toronto Maple Leafs

The Ottawa Senators continue to play with our hearts and continue to pull out wins. The Senators blew a 3-0 lead before beating the Washington Capitals 4-3 in overtime last night, following a 2-1 shootout win over the Detroit Red Wings that was possible after a late equaliser. The Detroit win was preceded by a shootout win over the Tampa Bay Lightning.

Tonight the Senators will look to close the gap on the Boston Bruins to a single point when they visit the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Andrew Hammond will start again. There was no morning skate today, here is the team that played last night.

MacArthur - Turris - Stone
Smith - Zibanejad - Ryan
Condra - Pageau - Lazar
Hoffman - Legwand - Chiasson

Methot - Karlsson
Wiercioch - Ceci
Borowiecki - Gryba

Hammond (starter)
Anderson

Some notes for tonight:

• At the time of writing, Philadelphia leads Pittsburgh 2-1 after two periods. The Flyers are being badly outshot though. In the unlikely event that the Flyers hold out in the third, the Senators will control their own fate going into tonight's game.
• Can we please get Zack Smith out of the top six? Mike Hoffman played under 10 minutes last night.
• Erik Karlsson has 301 points in his career after the two last night. He needs six in the last four to hit 70 for the third consecutive full season.
• Mark Stone is unbelievable. In that I never believed he would ever be closing in on 60 points, much less in his first full season. Very happy to be wrong.
• The Senators have 40 wins on the season, with 20 of them in the last two months.
• I am typing this from my phone so this will be short but go Sens!

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