There's No Place Like Home

Posted by Rob Brodie on February 24, 2009

The Senators are back at Scotiabank Place tonight, facing off against the Carolina Hurricanes, and it's merely the beginning of the type of hockey run that's really seen in these parts. If anywhere, for that matter.

Tonight's matchup marks the beginning of an eight-game stretch of home games at the ice house in Kanata. It's payback, of sorts, for the eight-game road trip (split in two parts) that the Senators endured over the Christmas holidays when the IIHF 2009 World Junior Championship occupied SBP. And if you can remember the last time the Sens played eight straight at home, please let me know.

Surely, it's got to be a welcome situation for a weary group of players who arrived back in Ottawa in the wee hours last Wednesday after a five-game, seven-day road trip that had them criss-crossing the United States through three time zones. Much easier, indeed, to deal with nearly three weeks of sleeping in your own beds for a change.

For the good folks who follow the team via television broadcasts, there's also this happy note: Last week's 9:30 p.m. start in Colorado marked the Senators last game outside the Eastern time zone this season. That means nary a start time later than 7:30 p.m. the rest of the way, with a couple of afternoon puck drops thrown in for good measure.

Here's the television lowdown for the rest of this week. Games tonight and Thursday (against the Western Conference-leading San Jose Sharks) are at 7:30 p.m. on Rogers Sportsnet, with CBC's Hockey Night in Canada taking over for Saturday's renewal of the Battle of Ontario with the Toronto Maple Leafs (a 7 p.m. start, by the way). It's Dean Brown and Garry Galley with the game call tonight, with Ian Mendes supplying reports from between the benches.