While most of the sporting world will have their eyes on Cleveland tonight to see what happens to LeBron James, we’ll be busy keeping our eyes on another small-time city in Ottawa. There, Dany Heatley makes his first appearance since being traded by the Senators before last season began. That’s about one of the few things that can drown out the noise in New York when the Rangers and Isles square off. As always, all times listed are Eastern.
7:00 pm
Tampa Bay @ Boston
Steve Stamkos visits Boston and Boston might have a surprise of their own with Marc Savard a possibility to see action tonight for the first time this season. Tampa Bay will be looking to build off their win over Toronto while Boston wants to keep the good mojo working after a shutout win over Philly last night.
Edmonton @ Toronto
Can the Oilers make it three in a row? They’d like to and there’s a chance they’ll be able to do it with three different goaltenders as Nikolai Khabibulin is slated to start tonight. For Toronto, they need to get over their heartbreaking loss in overtime to the Lightning. Knocking the streaking and young Oilers down a peg would be the truculent thing to do.
Montreal @ New Jersey
Jamie Langenbrunner is set to return to the Devils lineup for the first time since the first week of November. Meanwhile, the real battle will be a family battle on the ice as Montreal’s Brian Gionta will face his brother Stephen who will suit up for New Jersey. Meanwhile, Montreal’s ugly loss to Edmonton last night did have some residual effects tonight as P.K. Subban will be a healthy scratch. Subban’s brutal turnover in the third led to the Oilers tying goal. Edmonton won the game in overtime 4-3.
NY Rangers @ NY Islanders
New York’s biggest rivals get to reengage tonight and the bad blood spills over with Brandon Dubinsky and Rick DiPietro trading verbal jabs about greatly disliking each other’s teams. Familiarity does breed contempt after all. Fun part about this game? They get to face each other again tomorrow night at Madison Square Garden.
Atlanta @ Pittsburgh
Something has to give here. The Penguins roll into the game on a seven-game win streak while the Thrashers are winners of six in a row. Both teams have gotten stellar goaltending with Marc-Andre Fleury getting it done for the Penguins and Ondrej Pavelec for Atlanta. The game also features two of the NHL’s stars of November with Sidney Crosby being a scoring machine and Dustin Byfuglien throwing his weight around as well as his name into talk about the Norris trophy. Expect this one to be the game of the night.
7:30 pm
San Jose @ Ottawa
We’re pretty sure everything you need to know about this game can be found in this post from today. Dany Heatley returns to Ottawa for the first time since being dealt and the Sens will be looking to show him what he’s missing out on.
8:30 pm
Washington @ Dallas
Another game loaded with two streaking teams. Both teams are winners of four straight and the Stars’ strength has been goaltending. Tonight, they’ll give Andrew Raycroft the call in goal while Semyon Varlamov goes for Washington. The Caps looked awfully solid last night and tonight they’ll get their first chance to have newly acquired Scott Hannan suit up for them.
10:30 pm
Florida @ Los Angeles
The Kings aren’t about to have Marco Sturm in the lineup for them, but they’ll be looking to take advantage of a potentially tired Panthers squad that had the Ducks give them all they could handle and then some last night in a 5-3 loss. The good thing for Florida is they finally got off the power play shneid and they’ll have Tomas Vokoun going in net once again. For the Kings, they’re hoping that Florida is the elixir they need to break their four-game losing streak.