Montreal will play Ottawa in the Canadian derby the following night. The Canadiens are at the bottom of their division with 44 points and can’t even dream of making the playoffs. Besides, absolutely nothing holds up in recent games, defeats to Detroit and Boston have made the team’s deplorable state even worse. The guests are doing very poorly in attack, only 130 goals in 49 games, only Columbus is worse in the conference. Before games against Ottawa, Montreal has a terrible situation with injured players. There are 11 players in the hospital right now. Of the key players, I note the absence of Cofield, who is the team’s second leading scorer, as well as Sean Monaghen, who became one of the team’s leaders after moving from Calgary.

Ottawa has no roster problems. Tkachuk, Giroud and co arrived in great form for the derby, beating Toronto 6-2 away yesterday and beating the Islanders 2-1 at home a few days earlier. The winning streak allowed the “Senators” to get closer to Detroit and Florida. Yes, there is still a long way to the play-off zone, but why not aim for a few more wins, especially since the calendar allows it, opponents in the next matches are mostly not at the top, so in such a state Ottawa can count on a large number of points.