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The Ottawa Senators will hit the ground running as they re-start their season after the All-Star break with five games in seven nights this week, to go with nine games in fourteen nights! They start with a 4 game homestand tomorrow night with the NJ Devils coming to town, followed by Carolina on Tuesday night, Pittsburgh on Thursday night then a 12:30 pm start on Saturday with the Boston Bruins in town, ending with a quick road trip to Washington for another 12:30 pm start on Sunday due to Super Bowl weekend.

When you have 42 games in 81 days starring at you, the club better allocates minutes on the blueline properly because the risk of injury will be front and center with Thomas Chabot. Nikita Zaitsev is set to return from injury and he was paired with Chabot in practice today, even though Chabot has gone on record saying he prefers Lassi Thomson and Erik Brannstrom as his partners. He glows with confidence talking about how much fun he has playing with both of them. Putting Zaitsev in that spot could bring on some tough nights this week as he's better suited playing in a low-risk role on the bottom pairing so he doesn't see the opposition top two lines. DJ needs to put him in a position to succeed not fail, so let's hope he doesn't play favourites yet again with Zaitsev returning. The one aspect that I truly hope DJ Smith improves on post All-Star break is to learn from his mistakes in the first half of the season while making better in-game adjustments instead of waiting until it's too late to make a change with either a forward line or defensive pairing.

Connor Brown and Dylan Gambrell return from injury so that will definitely shore up the top 9 forward groups with Josh Norris still missing from the lineup. Norris has returned to Michigan to see the surgeon that performed the surgery on this shoulder. That news doesn't sound promising and listening to DJ Smith, they have no timeline for his return. On the bright side, the team is hoping for Colin White to return as early as Feb. 26th! If Norris does miss extended time, at least a capable NHL center is set to return in the coming weeks.

When looking at the goaltending situation this week, I would certainly hope Matt Murray starts against NJ and Pittsburgh, with Forsberg getting the start against Carolina. Then the coaching staff can see how the results look this week before settling on how to split up the weekend games. Personally, it would be interesting to see Murray start back-to-back nights at some point during the crazy schedule over the next two weeks. Seeing Jack Campbell do it last week for the Leafs with positive results, I still don't understand how Forsberg started 2 of the last 3 games prior to the All-Star break when Murray is pulling in 6 million dollars a year. Give Murray the net and let him run with it, as the team has said many times how they want him to assume the starter's role and get the majority of the games. It would be nice to see the coaching staff actually follow through on what they tell the media and the fanbase.

This is how the Sens lined up at practice today, keep in mind Brady Tkachuk was traveling back from Vegas. I would imagine Clark Bishop will be the odd man out as the coaching staff and management have stressed how it's time for the youth movement and Mark Kastelic has done a solid job in his first few games in the NHL. On defense, with Lassi Thomson getting sent back down last week, I would hope he gets recalled very soon. Dressing Victor Mete for 10 minutes last game instead of having Thomson with the big club served little purpose. Getting Thomson as much NHL game experience now is vital for his success next year. On another note, JBD took a "baseball swing to the head down" on Wednesday night in Belleville according to Sens GM Pierre Dorion. He didn't play in either game on the weekend with the BSens as he lost a few teeth and had several other loose teeth.

Bishop Stützle Gaudette
Formenton Paul CBrown
Tierney Kastelic Ennis
Sanford Gambrell Watson

Chabot Zaitsev
Holden Zub
Brannstrom JBrown
Mete

Speaking of the BSens, Pierre McGuire made his first media appearance on radio or TV since training camp during the 1st intermission of the Belleville game on Wednesday night. He talked with play-by-play man Jack Miller about the top prospects. I have emailed the radio station in Belleville to see if I can get a copy of the audio from the interview to post it here. oo bad this wasn't done on Ottawa radio too, as I'm sure the Sens fanbase would like to hear what management's direction is with many of the prospects. McGuire took in the last 3 games in Belleville, while Jesse Winchester was in town to work with the prospects during the weekend games.

The following day, Dorion was on TSN1200 for an interview and a few key points that I took from it had to do with how the team knows it can't have another slow next season after doing so the last two seasons. Dorion spoke about how post-trade deadline they hope to have most of their roster in place for next season so they can have continuity moving forward in helping with a better start next year. He mentioned how he hopes most of the players arrive 3-4 weeks before training camp and not the week of camp, while also stating he would like to make a hockey trade to add a top six forward at the trade deadline, something he failed to do this past offseason. I know the Nashville Predators have had scouts at Sens games for weeks now, while Ottawa has had scouts following the Anaheim Ducks. Who knows if one of these two teams is who Dorion is talking to but you have to wonder with both teams having key pending free agents if Ottawa could be linked to either team come March 21st. The link from the interview is below if you didn't get a chance to hear it.

https://www.tsn.ca/radio/ottawa-1200/dorion-i-think-we-have-most-of-the-pieces-for-a-cup-contending-team-1.1754405

Lastly, I had a Sens reader bring to my attention that Anthony LeBlanc the Sens President of Business Operations spoke on CFRA about 10 days ago(you can find the 1:28 blurb on Twitter) about how owner Eugene Melnyk is speaking with some of his scientists in the pharmaceutical field that he employs on how the team hopes they can get the Province's attendance numbers increased earlier than projected by the Government. I highly doubt anything they say could change the mind of the Provincial Government. I wonder if these are the same scientists that he had investigate the Matt Cooke skate slash on Erik Karlsson back in February 2013. Did we ever hear about the report on their findings of Cooke vs. Karlsson incident?!

I would love to hear from Sens fans about their expectations for the team this coming week and what prospects they hope to see here in Ottawa between now and the March 21st trade deadline. Or better yet, what they thought about the Dorion's and LeBlanc's comments on local radio.

Thanks for reading.
Kevin

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