Senators host Oilers, continue to mourn Karlsson
OTTAWA -- The Ottawa Senators will try to pick up the pieces from their most shattering loss of the season when they face the Edmonton Oilers at Canadian Tire Centre on Thursday night. It will be their second game since it was revealed that captain Erik Karlsson and his wife Melinda lost the son they were expecting in June. In their first attempt, the Senators (26-35-11) looked understandably absent in a 7-2 loss to the Florida Panthers on Tuesday. "Everybody's heartbroken, it's awful," coach Guy Boucher said afterward. "As a group in there, it has been a tough year, but I think this is a real personal, devastating blow." Said defenseman Mark Borowiecki: "I can't even imagine what Erik and Melinda are going through right now. It puts some perspective on life and the way things are going here. It's important for them to take time together to grieve. We've got so much love coming out of this dressing room for them. We truly are a family in here, and it hurts." The Edmonton Oilers felt Karlsson's pain as well. "Throughout the hockey community, when something like that happens to anybody in life, you feel for them," center Ryan Nugent-Hopkins said. "Everybody on our team was thinking about him and his family." The Senators took their first meeting of the season with the Oilers 6-1 in Edmonton on Oct. 14 that improved them to 3-0-2. Not much has gone well for them since, but the Oilers have also had a disappointing 2017-2018. After losing in the second round of the playoffs last spring, many though the Oilers were ready to take the next step. Instead, they enter Thursday's game with a 32-36-5 record and postseason hopes that have long been lost. Partly to blame for their struggles is a power play that ranks last in the NHL despite the presence of offensive stars Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl, and a penalty kill that ranks second-worst. The Oilers, however, have shown improvement of late. In their last 17 games, they have compiled a 9-6-1 record that proves to coach Todd McLellan that they haven't packed it in. "The players have shown a real strong work ethic and a willingness to do it right over the past two weeks when it could have been easy to roll over and play dead," said McLellan, whose team is coming off a 7-3 road victory over the Carolina Hurricanes in which six players had multi-point games. "That's a real good sign four our team and our organization moving forward. Obviously, we've got to get better in a lot of areas, but at least we're giving ourselves a chance to get better." The Senators, who are 15-15-6 on home ice, have also been weak on special teams play with a power play that ranks 26th and penalty killing that's 28th. McDavid is fourth in the NHL in points with 90, including a career-high 34 goals after recording 30 with 70 assists last season. |