The Ottawa Senators have a simple assignment Tuesday evening. If they beat Columbus Blue Jackets on the road, the franchise will pass a playoffs for the first time since 2017.
To carry out that the assignment may not be as easy, although the senators (42-29-6, 90 points) ride on a winning line with three games. The last two games were shutdowns, including a 4-0 Sunday at Blue Jackets (34-33-9, 77 points) at Hemsis.
When the team misses the playoffs in each of the last seven seasons, it is important to get there, said coach Travis Green after Sunday’s suspension.
“Everyone lives a good life when they are in the NHL, and that is very nice, but at the end of the day every person in this league wants a chance to win a (Stanley) Cup,” Green said. “The first step is that you have to make the playoffs to have that chance.”
Ottawa also seems closer to being completely healthy. TSN reported on Sunday that Brady Tkachuk and Nick Cousins went on Sunday and both will travel with their teammates to Columbus for the squad’s last road game with regular season. However, it is uncertain whether any of them will play.
Tkachuk, the team’s captain, last played in a loss on March 30 in Pittsburgh. He leads Ottawa with 29 goals and is ranked as third with 55 points.
Seven riders each scored a goal for the senators when they dropped Florida Panthers and Blue Jackets on consecutive days. At the same time, the defense has been solid because Ottawa owns a litter of 153 minutes.
The goals Anton Forsberg and Linus Ullmark registered the end over the weekend. Ullmark, the senators’ top nets, stopped all 30 shots he met from Columbus. He owns a 7-2-2 career record against Blue Jackets with a 2.08 goal-on-average and a .937 savings percentage.
While Ottawa is on its way of the playoffs, the blue jackets are closer to elimination. On March 1, Columbus held the top wild card site in the eastern conference-same place that Ottawa currently claims. Since then, coach Dean Evason’s team has only four wins in their last 16 games (4-11-1).
At 77 points with six matches left in their season, Blue Jacket’s eight points behind the Montreal Canadiens are for the last Wild-Card-site-but three teams between them and Montreal.
Columbus has dropped three straight and spent the weekend in Ontario without scoring. Toronto dropped Blue Jackets 5-0 on Saturday.
“Our job is to get ready for the next game, and that’s what we have to do, no matter how we feel emotionally or physically,” Evason said after Sunday’s game. “We have to get back and ready to go again. We are still in a position there … We must believe that if we can come up with a role and come to a run here, then we will be in a good place at the end of the year.”
Defender Zach Werenski leads Columbus with 54 assists and 74 points. The 27-year-old blueliner has been personal in these categories, while his 20 goals match what he achieved during the 2019-20 season. But he has made no goal since March 4 and has been kept meaningless in nine of his last 12 competitions.
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