Scoreboard	1	2	3	Odds
Ottawa Senators 39-35-7-1	1	1	3	+6.5
Montreal Canadiens 31-45-4-2	0	2	0	-165

Ottawa Senators vs. Montreal Canadiens Prediction, NHL Odds

Not only will their hostilities be renewed but each side is dealing with some overnight travel. Ottawa had to contend with the powerhouse Hurricanes on Friday whereas Montreal was in the City of Brotherly Love.

The NHL odds experts have placed Ottawa as -176 favourites on the money line (+138 on the puck line). The over-under has been established at the usual 6.5 goals.

Senators vs. Canadiens NHL Betting Odds

The Ontario-based squad has dominated regular season meetings with the Habs since late last season. Ottawa has claimed five consecutive victories, including a home-and-home that concluded the month of January. Equally impressive is that they’ve smashed the Habs for at least five goals in four of their outings.

Ottawa has lost three of its four most recent tilts. One might jokingly argue they’re happy the weekend is here because they only netted one goal in total following their outburst of seven against St. Louis last weekend. If there is one thing the Sens can rely on when playing Montreal, it’s making them suffer on the power play. Ottawa sports the sixth most efficient unit in the NHL. Conversely, the Habs are 28^th when down a player.

As for the Tricolore, they’ve won as much as they’ve lost in the last 10 contests. If we go a bit further back than that, we notice that Montreal has been very streaky since late January. They tripped four straight times, then were successful thrice, then lost twice, and have now strung two wins together. Betters take note that the Over has earned the spoilers seven times out of 10 in games involving Montreal.

Ottawa Senators

A schedule couldn’t get much more unforgiving than the one the Senators played this week. While some might point to last Sunday’s drubbing of the Blues as a counter-point, 24 hours later they were in Boston. A valiant effort, but a 3-1 defeat.

Then, one of the hottest teams in the NHL, the Carolina Hurricanes, took them on. D.J. Smith’s side put in as good an effort as one could imagine when looking at the 4-0 final. Granted, Carolina was all over the visitors in the opening minutes. Both Brent Burns (12^th) and Seth Jarvis (13^th) took advantage of some mediocre defending and silly errors. The first goal saw Cam Talbot tackled in his own net by a Hurricane, but no Senators could complain: one of their own had pushed the Hurricane into the goalie by mistake. At 2-0 and with the hosts massively outshooting the Sens, it looked as though it might be a long night but, truth be told, Ottawa played rather well the rest of the way and hit the post a couple of times. 4-0 doesn’t look good, but the effort was decent.

Montreal Canadiens

Martin St. Louis’s unit didn’t have nearly as difficult a task on Friday night as did Ottawa. They were in Philadelphia to play the Flyers, a club that only had four more points than the Habs in the standings before puck drop.

The high spirits of the victory over the Devils earlier in the week carried over into Pennsylvania – Philly also simply isn’t very good. Montreal pounced on some sloppy defending often and early, with the Flyers frequently losing opposing skaters deep in their own zone. Both David Savard (third) and Chris Tierney (third) took advantage of the opportunities awarded to them in the first period. Nick Suzuki (19^th) increased his side’s lead to 3-0 on a second-period power play and that was pretty much all she wrote. The Flyers were never truly in this one, playing loose, lackadaisical hockey. Montreal takes it 5-2.