Although the Florida Panthers have already said goodbye to their play-off hopes, they have beaten the Ottawa Senators in all three meetings this season. Can the hosts break this negative run? They really need to.
Ottawa Senators
The hosts are fighting for the second wild-card spot, and at the moment they are holding it. Their remaining schedule is fairly favourable; only the New York Islanders this Saturday are likely to throw everything into securing a win, as they are direct rivals. They have picked up good momentum (6:3:1) and have won three of their last four games, conceding relatively few goals.
At the same time, they currently have problems in defence, not in terms of statistics but in terms of personnel. Four defencemen are injured, including Thomas Chabot, who has undergone surgery. One positive from the 1:4 defeat to the Minnesota Wild on 4 April was the return, after a month out, of key defenceman Jake Sanderson, an Olympic champion in Milan.
Florida Panthers
The visitors have a long injury list, although there is no goaltender on it. It includes their leading scorer Sam Reinhart (61 points) and Brad Marchand, who carried the team for a long stretch (54 points). In total they are without four centres, three left wings and four defencemen. Only the right wings and the two goaltenders are fully fit or at least able to play.
Even so, among the reigning champions’ two regulation wins in their last 10 games there was a victory over the Ottawa Senators (6:3). On that occasion everything went wrong for the visitors from the very start: after 66 seconds they were already 0:2 down, and the first period ended 5:0 in favour of the Florida Panthers.
Ottawa Senators vs Florida Panthers Prediction
In both the game against the Panthers and the one against the Wild, goaltender Linus Ullmark had very poor performances. He is expected to start again in the upcoming game, and Travis Green may be taking a risk by putting him in goal once more. In this situation, rather than backing the more motivated hosts simply to win, it makes more sense to look at an over on the total goals market, because with injury lists like these it is hard to avoid a large number of mistakes and goals.
