UTAH MAMMOTH (9-6-0) at OTTAWA SENATORS (7-5-3)
Faceoff: 7 pm, TSN5, RDS
Canadian Tire Centre
The Ottawa Senators will try and make it two wins in a row on Sunday night as they host the newly-named Utah Mammoth. With Ottawa enduring its first snowfall of the season, it’s a perfect time to welcome the frozen tundra-loving Mammoth for the first time.
The hockey artists formerly known as the Winnipeg Jets, Arizona Coyotes, and the Utah Hockey Club have been here before, but this is the first time since deciding on their new name and logo back in May.
The Arizona Coyotes are now extinct, so after a year without a name, they played the extinct card again, choosing the name of the slow-moving, elephant-like creature that’s been gone for more than 4,000 years.
But we digress.
The State of Sens Nation
To quote the 1990s country duo Brooks and Dunn (as people often do), the Senators are getting pretty good at barely getting by.
They blew a 2-0 lead and played nearly half of Saturday’s game in Philadelphia without registering a single shot, yet they came away with a 3-2 overtime victory over the Flyers. That was the Sens’ third straight overtime game, and while the style points often haven’t been there, the points that count have. The Senators have only lost once in regulation in their past nine games.
Tim Stutzle’s second goal of the game won it for the Sens on Saturday after a nice pass from Drake Batherson. It was a full-circle retribution moment for Batherson, whose poor overtime pass the Saturday before was the deciding moment in a loss to the Montreal Canadiens. For Stutzle, he moves into a tie for the team goal-scoring lead with Shane Pinto (8), who hasn’t scored in six games – though it hasn’t been for lack of opportunities.
Winger Olle Lycksell was in for tough guy Kurtis MacDermid on Saturday night. It’s possible someone may be nicked up right now because the Sens have called up Belleville’s tough guy, Hayden Hodgson. Leevi Merilainen will likely start game two of this back-to-back situation.
The Opponent
The Mammoth came firing out of the gate this season with an 8-2 record, but they’ve since lost 4 of their last 5 games.
To win, the Senators will have to find a way to limit the damage from Utah’s top line of Clayton Keller, Logan Cooley, and Nick Schmaltz. Schmaltz, who once had a seven-point game against the Senators, leads the team with eight goals and 10 assists. Cooley also has eight goals and just signed a Mammoth eight-year extension worth $80 million.
It’s a homecoming of sorts for Utah head coach Andre Tourigny, a former Senators assistant coach and Ottawa 67’s head coach.
While the Sens are in a back-to-back situation on Sunday, they’re still more rested than the Mammoth, who had a night game on Saturday and gave up five unanswered goals in a 6-2 loss to Montreal. Utah goalie Vitek Vanecek will probably start over Karel Vejmelka, who played on Saturday.
So there’s your game preview. Perhaps this will be the week I will start rendering these game previews by song like they do in Utah. Here’s the one @ClaytonQuarles put together for their game against Montreal on Saturday.
Hockey Club Clayton (@ClaytonQuarles) on X
Road trip game day! Let’s turn the Habs into the “have nots” and get a couple points 🥅 #tusksup @utahmammoth
🔊sound on for mediocre Mammoth music @801AdrianDenny @mike_folta @NOlczyk16
(very heavily inspired by Brenn’s much-better song “Days on end”)
Both teams will announce their lineups and combinations closer to game time.
Senators projected lineup (subject to change)
Nick Cousins — Tim Stutzle — Drake Batherson
Ridly Greig — Dylan Cozens — David Perron
Michael Amadio — Shane Pinto — Claude Giroux
Olle Lycksell — Lars Eller — Fabian Zetterlund
Jake Sanderson — Artem Zub
Thomas Chabot — Nick Jensen
Tyler Kleven — Nikolas Matinpalo
Leevi Merilainen
Linus Ullmark
Mammoth projected lineup (subject to change)
Clayton Keller — Logan Cooley — Nick Schmaltz
JJ Peterka — Barrett Hayton — Dylan Guenther
Lawson Crouse — Jack McBain — Michael Carcone
Kailer Yamamoto — Kevin Stenlund — Brandon Tanev
Mikhail Sergachev — Dmitri Simashev
Nate Schmidt — John Marino
Ian Cole — Olli Maatta
Vitek Vanecek
Karel Vejmelka
