The Ottawa Senators hold their playoff destiny in their hands as they head into their game Saturday afternoon against the visiting Minnesota Wild.
The Senators moved into the second wild-card spot from the Eastern Conference with a 4-1 win against the Sabres on Thursday night, which also prevented Buffalo from ending the NHL’s longest active playoff drought at 14 years.
“(Buffalo’s) a really good team, they’ve been playing great hockey, so for us to just dig in and grind one out there, I’m proud of this group,” Ottawa forward Dylan Cozens said.
Ottawa (39-26-10, 88 points) is tied in points with the Detroit Red Wings and Columbus Blue Jackets, but owns the tiebreaker over both with seven games left in the regular season. Columbus fell out of that spot with a 5-1 loss at the Carolina Hurricanes on Thursday, its fifth straight defeat.
“I don’t think anybody wants the playoffs more than the guys in this room,” Ottawa captain Brady Tkachuk said.
The Wild (42-21-12, 96 points) clinched a playoff spot with a 5-2 win against the Vancouver Canucks on Thursday.
Minnesota is locked into third in the Central Division, six points behind the Dallas Stars and 12 points ahead of the fourth-place Utah Mammoth.
The Wild can start focusing on a likely first-round matchup against the Stars. Minnesota has won two of the three games between the clubs this season, and they will face off one final time in the regular season on Thursday in Dallas.
Minnesota hasn’t won a playoff series since 2015, going 0-8 in the opening round since then.
“It’s always fun to go back into the playoffs,” Minnesota goalie Filip Gustavsson said. “As long as you get there, you have a chance to win it all. Now, you just kind of focus and get ready for it.”
Gustavsson made 30 saves in the win against the Canucks, giving him 100 victories in just under four seasons with the Wild and becoming just the fourth goalie in team history to reach that milestone.
“I feel like, with the Wild, I got my breakthrough,” said Gustavsson, who was traded to Minnesota from Ottawa for fellow goalie Cam Talbot on July 12, 2022. “I got a lot more starts and I got more success, and it’s so much fun to play here and I hope there’s many more to come.”
Wild forwards Matt Boldy and Kirill Kaprizov each scored their 40th goals of the season on Thursday, joining Theo Fleury and Robert Reichel of the Calgary Flames as the only teammates in the past 31 years to score their 40th goals in the same game.
“For them to have a healthy competition, I always think that’s positive, particularly the way that they’ve handled it,” Minnesota coach John Hynes said.
Senators defenseman Tyler Kleven left the Buffalo game with an upper-body injury after blocking a shot up high in the first period.
Senators coach Travis Green did not have an update on Kleven after the game, but said he was “not expecting it to be great news.”
Ottawa is already thin at the blue line with injuries to Jake Sanderson (upper body), Nick Jensen (lower body), Dennis Gilbert (upper body), Thomas Chabot (upper body), and Carter Yakemchuk (upper body).
