That backup is Samuel Ersson, and he has been up and down. He came over from Toronto for a 5th-round pick and was 1-3-1 with a 3.78 GAA and an .886 save percentage going into Buffalo. Then he stopped 24 of 25 at KeyBank Center while Shane Pinto and Michael Amadio scored in the 3rd to steal a 2-1 win. That was his 2nd straight win after beating San Jose, and now he gets a 3rd straight start, this time at home. The forward group in front of him is thinner than it was a few days ago. Ridly Greig (lower body) is out and will miss a 2nd straight game, and the left side is already without Warren Foegele (knee, 3-4 weeks), Andre Burakovsky (IR) and William Eklund (10-12 weeks after ankle-tendon surgery). Tyler Kleven, 5th on the team in ice time at 20:14 a night, missed Buffalo with an illness.
Utah gets here off a game that slipped away. The Mammoth led Montreal 3-2 after 2 periods at the Bell Centre, gave up the tying goal in the 3rd and lost 5-4 past regulation. It was their first loser point of the season. The trip before that was a mixed bag: a 4-3 win in Pittsburgh, a 6-3 loss in Philadelphia, then a 3-2 win in Toronto, settled by Nick Schmaltz's power-play goal with 6:48 left. KSL credited reshuffled lines with waking up the offense, and Utah has scored 3 or more in 4 straight.
The schedule matters here. Ottawa's last 5 games were all on the road, a West Coast trip through Vegas, Los Angeles, San Jose and Anaheim before the stop in Buffalo. The Senators gave up 6 goals twice on that trip, to the Kings and the Ducks, which tells you how much they have missed Ullmark. Utah gets a day off after Montreal, but this is still the last stop of a 4-city Eastern trip, and it's the 2nd time in 3 nights the Mammoth play on the road.
Utah's blue line is missing bodies too. John Marino and Maveric Lamoureux are on IR, and Nate Schmidt went day-to-day after Montreal. Up front, Kailer Yamamoto is day-to-day after missing the Canadiens game with an upper-body injury. Neither defense held up well this week, and with Ullmark out again, Saturday at 7:00 PM ET has the makings of a game where both goalies get worked.
The teams have the same record and nearly the same recent form. Ottawa sits 4 points up on Buffalo in the Atlantic and is finally back on home ice. Utah has spent the week proving it can win in hostile buildings and losing the games it should have closed out. Without Ullmark, the question is whether Ersson's last 2 starts were a turn or a blip, and a Mammoth offense that has scored 3 or more in 4 straight is a fair test of it.
