It will be a two-screen kind of night for viewers of the Ottawa Senators tonight, as the team will both host the Toronto Maple Leafs at Canadian Tire Centre and travel to Scotiabank Arena to visit the Leafs.
Wednesday will serve as the first of two split-squad nights for the Sens this preseason, the second to come on Saturday night, when they will do the same thing with the Montreal Canadiens.
Travis Green said that ultimately, the team isn’t preparing any differently than a regular game but having four defencemen unavailable for the games (Jake Sanderson, Jordan Spence, Artem Zub, and Jorian Donovan) did throw a bit of a wrench into his original plans for the game.
“I think you go back and forth, and you think about it all summer when you have a split game, whether to load up one team, load up another team, send your good team on the road, or [keep them] at home,” said Green. “Our preference is to kind of try to split them up as best we can.”
Green said that both Sanderson and Spence were battling something minor and precautionary. Zub, meanwhile, is skating as he continues to recover from the injury that knocked him out of the playoffs — but progressing slowly. Jorian Donovan hasn’t skated with either main group at training camp so far.
“I don’t see him being ready to start the season where he’s at right now,” said Green about Zub, speaking to the media after both groups took to the ice for morning skate.
With that in mind, the competition for the final spots on the blueline will heat up over the rest of preseason. Carter Yakemchuk skated alongside Tyler Kleven at morning skate, his same partner from Monday. He will travel to Toronto, as will Nikolas Matinpalo.
“We have like, 10 very good [defencemen] there, so yeah, I try to do my best every day, and we’ll see what’s going to happen,” said Matinpalo. “There’s many guys who have many NHL guys already… you need to do your best every day if you want to play [on] this team, and you need to know there’s good players in Belleville trying to come to the NHL.”
Ben Hutton, in training camp on a PTO, is in the group who will play at home tonight. So will 21-year-old Hoyt Stanley, who was paired with Thomas Chabot during morning skate.
“I'm going out there to kind of get the reps more than anything else, and you know, it'll be a fun night,” said Chabot.
“I'm playing with Hoyt here tonight, and obviously we want to make a good impression for him and try to play as best a hockey game as we can together. But no, really it just comes down to getting ready for the season.”
Chabot, however, will be a game-time decision of sorts, as he and his wife Marion await the birth of their first child. He said that throughout his career, he’s kept his phone in his locker at the rink, but that has changed this week.
“It’s usually, you get back and you're excited about hockey and focused on training camp. But right now, it's kind of being focused on training camp, but knowing there's a phone call that could come up at any time. So no, it's just an exciting time,” said Chabot. “Hopefully the call comes in the next couple of days.”
