The Ottawa Senators have a simple assignment Tuesday night. If they beat the Columbus Blue Jackets on the road, the franchise will clinch a playoff berth for the first time since 2017.
Carrying out that assignment may not be as easy, even though the Senators (42-29-6, 90 points) are riding a three-game winning streak. The last two games were shutouts, including a 4-0 dispatching Sunday of the Blue Jackets (34-33-9, 77 points) on home ice.
With the team missing out on the playoffs in each of the past seven seasons, getting there is important to the players, coach Travis Green said after Sunday’s shutout.
“Everyone lives a good life when they’re in the NHL, and that’s 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 you got to make the playoffs to have that chance.”
Ottawa also appears closer to being fully healthy. TSN reported Sunday that forwards Brady Tkachuk and Nick Cousins skated Sunday and both will travel with their teammates to Columbus for the squad’s final regular-season road game. However, it’s uncertain whether either will play.
Tkachuk, the team’s captain, last played in a March 30 loss at Pittsburgh. He leads Ottawa with 29 goals and ranks third with 55 points.
Seven skaters each scored one goal for the Senators when they blanked the Florida Panthers and Blue Jackets on consecutive days. Meanwhile, the defense has been solid as Ottawa owns a shutout streak of 153 minutes.
Goalies Anton Forsberg and Linus Ullmark registered the shutouts over the weekend. Ullmark, the Senators’ top netminder, stopped all 30 shots he faced from Columbus. He owns a 7-2-2 career record against the Blue Jackets with a 2.08 goals-against average and a .937 save percentage.
While Ottawa is on the cusp of the playoffs, the Blue Jackets are teetering closer to elimination. On March 1, Columbus held the top wild-card spot in the Eastern Conference — the same spot Ottawa currently claims. Since then, coach Dean Evason’s team has just four wins in its last 16 games (4-11-1).
At 77 points with six games left in their season, the Blue Jackets are eight points behind the Montreal Canadiens for the final wild-card spot — but with three teams between them and Montreal.
Columbus has lost three straight and spent the weekend in Ontario without scoring. Toronto blanked the Blue Jackets 5-0 on Saturday.
“Our job is to get ready for the next game, and that’s what we have to do, regardless of how we feel emotionally or physically,” Evason said after Sunday’s game. “We got to get back up and ready to go again. We’re still in a position where … we have to have the belief that if we can get on a roll and get on a run here, that we’ll be in a good spot at the end of the year.”
Defenseman Zach Werenski leads Columbus with 54 assists and 74 points. The 27-year-old blueliner has set personal bests in these categories, while his 20 goals match what he accomplished in the 2019-20 season. However, he has not scored a goal since March 4 and has been held pointless in nine of his last 12 contests.
–Field Level Media
