The Ottawa Senators host the Philadelphia Flyers on Sunday afternoon in their 80th game of the season. As of Saturday night, the Sens are pretty much locked in as the Eastern Conference’s first Wild Card playoff qualifier.
After the Montreal Canadiens’ 1-0 overtime loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs on Saturday, the best the Habs can do is tie Ottawa in the final standings, but they can’t catch the Senators in regulation wins, which is the first tiebreaker. The Sens can still catch the Panthers for third place, but they’d need to win their last three while Florida wins their last two in regulation.
So, beyond continuing good habits and playing the right way, the Senators have nothing to play for in their final three games. But for winger Nick Cousins, it’s about getting back up to speed. He’s expected to play on Sunday for the first time since his knee injury in January.
The two clubs have split the season series so far. The Flyers took the first meeting, earning a 5–4 overtime win in November. The Senators rebounded with a 5–2 victory in Philadelphia last month.
The Senators won a feisty 5-2 contest at home on Friday night against the Montreal Canadiens. Shane Pinto scored twice and cracked the 20 goal mark for the second time in his career. Pinto, Ridly Greig, and Michael Amadio, have been fantastic of late on both sides of the puck.
The Sens home record is 25–11–2, and everybody’s working for the weekends. They’re on a run of 14–2-1 on Saturdays and Sundays.
The Flyers are enjoying the so-called new coach bump. With a 4–3 shootout win over the New York Islanders on Saturday, they’re 5-1 since the firing of John Tortorella. Brad Shaw has been running the bench in the interim and making a good first impression on GM Daniel Briere. Notably, as a player, Shaw remains the only person to have ever captained both the Ottawa 67s and the Ottawa Senators.
Former Habs first-rounder Ryan Poehling is suddenly playing out of his mind with 13 points in his last 10 games, including 9 since the coaching change.
With the Senators all but clinched as the Wild Card 1 team, they will play the winner of the Atlantic Division and that will now be either Toronto or Tampa Bay. If the Leafs beat Carolina on Sunday night and Tampa loses to Buffalo, we’ll officially have our first Battle of Ontario playoff series in 21 years.
Sunday’s faceoff with the Flyers is at 1 pm.
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