"They're a good team," Karlsson said of the defending Stanley Cup champions. "They're in this position because they are a good team. They won last year. They have tons of experience. They know what they are going to have to do to be successful. It's going to be up to us to focus on ourselves and doing the things that we feel we have to do to be successful and shutting them down.
"They've been in this position a bunch before and they have players that obviously won, not only once, but multiple times. It's a nice challenge for us that's going to be a lot of fun and bring us a lot of experience. We're in a learning process and we're going to learn how to win this one."
PPG Paints Arena, then known as Consol Energy Center, is where Karlsson sustained a deep cut to his left Achilles tendon in a collision with then-Penguins forward Matt Cooke on Feb. 13, 2013. Karlsson missed 31 games in the 48-game season but returned for the playoffs; the Senators lost to the Penguins in five games.
"It's just like any other rink," Karlsson said. "I'm left with permanent damage because of it, but there's not much to do about it now. I'm not going be able to reverse it or anything like that. You just have to move forward. I moved away from that a long time ago. If I remember correctly, we played them already that year in the playoffs and I was past it already then."