The Ottawa Senators are back home on Monday for a Thanksgiving afternoon matchup with the Los Angeles Kings (1 pm, RDS2, TSN5). If Travis Green gets the bigger half of the turkey wishbone this weekend, he’ll surely use it to wish for a better performance from his team than the one they gave him on Saturday in Montreal.
The Senators dropped to 1-1 on the young season after a 4-1 loss to the Canadiens. That muted some of the excitement of Thursday’s 3-1 opening night victory over the Florida Panthers.
Their opponents on Monday are Kings of the Road in October. Due to arena renovations at Crypto.com arena, Los Angeles has had to open the season with seven straight games away from home. They defeated the Buffalo Sabres on Thursday and lost in overtime to the Boston Bruins on Saturday.
A Senators-Kings matchup highlights the top end of the 2020 NHL Draft. The Sens have Tim Stutzle (third overall) and Jake Sanderson (fifth overall), who are both in full bloom, while the Kings have Quinton Byfield (second overall), who finally had his breakout season in 2023-34.
Speaking of top draft picks, it’ll be a special game for Nepean’s Brandt Clarke, who will play his first NHL game in Ottawa. The 21-year-old Kings’ defenceman was the eighth overall pick in the 2021 NHL Draft and is slated to be a full-timer with LA this season.
The Senators appear to have their first injury of the young season. Forward Ridly Greig was absent from Sunday’s practice.
“Ridly’s fighting a little bit of an upper-body injury,” Green told the media on Sunday. “We’ll see how he is.”
While Green didn’t sound concerned, Greig has a history of shoulder issues that date back to junior with both the Brandon Wheat Kings and Canada’s world junior team. If Greig can’t go, expect Adam Gaudette to re-enter the lineup.
Linus Ullmark also got practice off for maintenance reasons. Green doesn’t talk about starting goalies until game day, but it will be interesting to see if he keeps rolling with Ullmark or turns to Anton Forsberg.
Green said Sunday that he wasn’t sure yet if he would juggle things up on Monday. But here’s how his lines looked at Sunday’s practice.
Senators possible lineup
Brady Tkachuk — Tim Stutzle — Claude Giroux
Noah Gregor — Josh Norris — Drake Batherson
David Perron — Shane Pinto — Michael Amadio
Nick Cousins — Adam Gaudette — Zack MacEwen
Jake Sanderson — Artem Zub
Thomas Chabot — Nick Jensen
Tyler Kleven — Travis Hamonic
Linus Ullmark
Anton Forsberg
Kings possible lineup
Alex Laferriere — Anze Kopitar — Adrian Kempe
Kevin Fiala — Quinton Byfield — Warren Foegele
Tanner Jeannot — Phillip Danault — Trevor Moore
Andre Lee — Alex Turcotte — Trevor Lewis
Mikey Anderson — Jordan Spence
Vladislav Gavrikov — Kyle Burroughs
Joel Edmundson — Brandt Clarke
Darcy Kuemper
David Rittich
