Preseason Game 5 Hub: Ottawa Senators @ Montreal Canadians

The Senators take on the Montreal Canadiens in their 5th preseason game tonight. The result doesn't matter in any meaningful sense, but beating these guys is always incredibly satisfying nonetheless. Hopefully the hockey gods make up for the awful breaks the Sens suffered in Sunday's 5-2 loss to the Pittsburgh Penguins.

Here's how the Sens are expected to line up:

As for the Habs, they appear to be running a Kirby Dach and Friends lineup. They look to have quite a few candidates in the mix for roster spots.

Game Notes:

• Josh Norris and Artem Zub will be making their pre-season debuts tonight. Outside of Claude Giroux, this is pretty close to what we might expect on opening night.
• Four players have been cut from Ottawa's training camp. Nikolay Kulemin has been released from his professional tryout agreement, and Leevi Merilainen, Donovan Sebrango, and Filip Roos have been assigned to Belleville. This means Jake Sanderson, Thomas Chabot and Tyler Kleven are the only left-shot defensemen on the roster, and as such will likely play each of the team's remaining preseason games.
• The remaining battles for spots likely consist of the following: Jan Jenik vs Zack Ostapchuk (neither of whom is expected to play tonight) for the fourth-line centre role, Adam Gaudette vs Matthew Highmore for a potentially open extra forward spot, and Carter Yakemchuk, Jacob Bernard-Docker and Addison fighting for one (or two, pending the status of Zub) spot on the blueline. This could very well be the deciding game for those latter two battles.
• In a rare turn of events, players were injured whilst playing with Arber Xhekaj, as opposed to against him. The Habs lost recent acquisition Patrik Laine and 2023 5th-overall pick David Reinbacher to injuries in their recent game against the Toronto Maple Leafs. I'll never cheer for opposing players becoming injured, but I do appreciate the reminder that teams other than the Ottawa Senators can have something go wrong occasionally. Injuries will be inevitable for your favourite team, but the same is true for the other 31.
• Tonight's 7:00 pm EST game will be available on TSN5, TSN2, RDS, and TSN 1200.