Sens Week Ahead: Feb 28 to Mar 5

It's a battered and bruised St. Louis team that limps in to Ottawa. You could say they're the Black and Blues.

Yes, that was terrible. Moving on.

The Blues had a pretty solid streak going for a while, but have hit the skids recently with three losses in a row, the most recent a 5-0 blowout at the hands of Nashville.

The injuries that have been piling up definitely are a problem for St. Louis. Steen is second in team scoring and first in assists. Pietrangelo is having a bit of a down season, but still carries the bulk of the minutes for the team on the blue line. Ott, uh, takes penalties. Maybe better off without him.

They've been leaning pretty evenly on Elliott and Jake Allen so far, but it's Allen on his own for the time being. Allen has been doing pretty well, but he's never carried a full starter's load.

From a team that was blown out to a team that was doing the blowing out.

Tampa is on a bit of a tear lately. It's not just blowing out New Jersey 4-0 on Friday. They've won five in a row, and are doing it with solid play that probably should have netted them a few more recent wins.

Possession wise, they're very much on a hot streak. In their last 10 games, they're holding at just under 55% and have only come out on the losing end of the possession battle in two of the games.

Part of the reason they don't have a better last-10 record than 6-4-0 is Ben Bishop. He had a pretty dismal five game run (mostly) in that stretch peaking at a .905. He seems to have turned that around though - he's posted a .956 in the last three games.

Sorry, I don't really know enough about the Marlies to write much here.

They're a team basically shipping out any healthy UFA that has anything resembling value for whatever they can get back in return - including some pieces that make them actively worse.

It's hard to say just what their roster will look like come next Saturday, but with the tank in high gear it's safe to say it won't look like a very good one.