GAME DAY #11: Wings @ sens- 7:00pm ET - saturday Oct 31, 2015

The Ottawa Senators will be looking for their first three-game winning streak of the season when they play the Detroit Red Wings at Canadian Tire Centre on Saturday.
The Senators defeated the Red Wings 3-1 on Friday in the first game of their home-and-home.
"It was probably our best all-round game of the year," said Senators center Kyle Turris, who scored his sixth goal of the season. "We have the opportunity to follow it up with another good one and hopefully take both games.
"We were really on top of them in their zone. We put a lot of pressure on them offensively and we really took their space away."
Ottawa coach Dave Cameron said he liked the way the Senators played as five-man units.
"We have to play the way we've been preaching and it's play with some pace and support all over the ice," he said. "The way that we describe it is if I stop my video at any time no matter where the puck is and I see five guys in the picture, we're playing good hockey."
Craig Anderson will be in goal for the Senators after Andrew Hammond got his first win of the season Friday.
Goalie Petr Mrazek is expected to start for the Red Wings, who have lost two games in a row. They are 1-5-1 in their past seven games after winning their first three games.
"Especially after such a good start, 3-0," Red Wings rookie Dylan Larkin said. "There's ups and downs and we're really feeling it. I think we just have to get back to working hard and playing our game."
Detroit coach Jeff Blashill juggled his lines on Friday.
"Usually when Blashill moves (lines) around it works and generates some energy," Larkin said. "We're still trying to find combinations that work. We need to start making some plays and playing the way we were playing the first three games."


Here are the projected lineups:
RED WINGS
Justin Abdelkader – Henrik Zetterberg – Dylan Larkin
Tomas Tatar – Riley Sheahan – Gustav Nyquist
Tomas Jurco – Darren Helm – Teemu Pulkkinen
Drew Miller – Luke Glendening – Joakim Andersson
Jonathan Ericsson – Niklas Kronwall
Danny DeKeyser – Alexey Marchenko
Jakub Kindl – Brendan Smith
Petr Mrazek
Jimmy Howard
Injured: Pavel Datysuk (ankle), Johan Franzen (concussion), Brad Richards (upper body), Mike Green (upper body), Kyle Quincy (concussion).

SENATORS
Shane Prince – Kyle Turris – Mark Stone
Matt Puempel – Mika Zibanejad – Bobby Ryan
Milan Michalek – Jean-Gabriel Pageau – Alex Chiasson
Max McCormick – Zack Smith – Chris Neil
Marc Methot - Erik Karlsson
Patrick Wiercioch - Cody Ceci
Jared Cowen – Mark Borowiecki
Craig Anderson 
Andrew Hammond

this GDT was brought to you by Bud Lime Light - "Fiesta Forever"

The Hamburglar got us off to a good start on this home and home. Dont stop the music.

Excellent GDT, Flo.

I'd like to remind everyone of Big Ev's Paradox: he said we can't win both games but also guaranteed a win tonight.

So it sounds from twitter like this would not be a good game for me to watch on the elliptical.

We played pretty well for a period and a half, then completely lost control.

Like i said, pretty much every back to back especially against the same team is a guaranteed one win one loss.

I didn't watch the game, but why is every game anderson starts at least a minimum 4 GA? Does the defense just quit or is anderson not that great lately?

Dubnyl leads the league with 7 wins yet his SV% is under .900. So it's not all Anderson's fault. But if you look at goalies who have started 4 or more games he is 27th in SV%.

That Cowen - Borowiecki pairing is beyond horrible. Especially on the PK. Boro goes for the big hit and takes himself out of position. Cowen stands right in front of Anderson blocking out all light.neither one of them really knows how to protect the crease. And Boro can't clear the puck on his backhand because he is playing the wrong side.

When was the last time he had a good game, really? When was the last time his toughness was needed? Wiseman has shown he can play and he is a right hand shot.

I understand that they don't want Karlsson on the PK, but Ceci is better at it than Boro at this point. Play Methot-Ceci as your first PK pair at least.

Everyone is taking bad penalties now. And the PK is bad. The only teams with a worse PK percentage are the Jackets, Sabres, Leafs, Devils and Bruins. Bruins? Yeah, that's not going to last and we'll be squarely in the bottom 5 in the league.

Interesting stat -- while the Sens are 4th in the league in overall PK time (that's bad) they are 26th in 1st period PK time (that's good). They are 13th in 3rd period PK time (middle of the road). So it's the penalties in the 2nd period (4th in PK time) that are killing this team. It's not conditioning as they do much better in the third. Do they lose focus?

Michallica wrote:I didn't watch the game, but why is every game anderson starts at least a minimum 4 GA? Does the defense just quit or is anderson not that great lately?

He needs to make a couple of those saves, but then they're High quality chances that the sens as a team are allowing. Defence hasn't been great.

SpezDispensed wrote:

Michallica wrote:I didn't watch the game, but why is every game anderson starts at least a minimum 4 GA? Does the defense just quit or is anderson not that great lately?

He needs to make a couple of those saves, but then they're High quality chances that the sens as a team are allowing.  Defence hasn't been great.  

As always, can't really look at any individual goal (or game) and point the finger at Anderson, but overall he has not been as good as the Sens need him to be. Same can be said about quite a few on the roster outside of the top line. Stone has been slowly getting better, the effort was there the last 3-4 games and he's got a scoring streak on that's sure to boost his confidence. That goal he scored in the first Detroit game where he was banging his stick on the ice for the pass -- looks like his confidence is back.

Hoffman sounds like he's back for the next game, as they sent McCormick back to Bingo. So the top line should be back to form, the second line has Bobby scoring, and that third line should get a boost with Puempel.

Interesting article from Brennan about Karlsson. His ice time is down from last year, this is after he admitted to not working out on-ice very much this off-season and coming into camp 7-10 lbs up from his playing weight last year. I've noticed he's been walked a few times already, and he doesn't seem to have the same zip coming back when pinching. I'm a little concerned.

This team's got too many problems right now: their best player (Karlsson) is not playing as well as we have become accustomed to; the top goalie is not having a great season; the second line has not (yet) played great; Weircioch is struggling; the third pairing is horrible; the 4th line is taking too many penalties.

Have I missed anything?

I don't see many big problems. I would just demote wiercioch but that's about it. The fact that we're ahead of a team like tampanl after a slowish start with a really bad schedule is a good thing. We're in a way better position than last year already and our offense has been very good. Anderson will rebound. Some goalies just don't have a good October.

The penalty on Neil was a terrible call, and that gave them a goal...so that didn't help either.

I'm sure this was dealt with, but Anderson vs wraparounds is absolutely heinous.

spader wrote:I'm sure this was dealt with, but Anderson vs wraparounds is absolutely heinous.

This one was different. It's not that he could not push off his right foot and come across, he was completely out of position after he fell for the deke and tried to poke check. By the time the puck went in the other side Anderson was on his stomach facing the opposite direction on the other side of the crease. The closest to the puck was Methot with a head-first slide.