HockeyLeafs, Senators need to find their scoring groove

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Ottawa captain Daniel Alfreddson has eight goals in 22 games this season. (Getty Images)

Read up on the latest tidbits and trends as Hockey Night in Canada's play-by-play voice Jim Hughson takes you behind the scenes and into Saturday's featured game.

This week's work: Toronto Maple Leafs at Ottawa Senators (CBC, CBCSports.ca, 7 p.m. ET/4 p.m. PT)

The script:

In any pre-season conversation, objective hockey fans would acknowledge the expectation that Ottawa's top-six forwards should be better than Toronto's.

But a quarter of the way through the season, the two groups are surprisingly even and the question turns to which group, if either, can get their team in the playoffs and which group will score more the rest of the way - the Senators with a track record and experience or the Leafs with youth and potential?

Okay, it's only a conversation a Toronto and Ottawa fan would have and a cynic would suggest the goal-scoring equality is more a Senator deficiency than a Leaf attribute or that out-scoring the Sens' top-six is like being slightly taller than Bilbo Baggins. Nothing to brag about as neither team has enough "he shoots he scores" in its game, but look at it in the context of them playing each other:

Top-6 scoring for Toronto (31 goals):

Clarke MacArthur (7), Mikhail Grabovski (5), Nikolai Kulemin (7), Nazem Kadri (0), Tyler  Bozak (3), Phil Kessel (9) 

Top-6 scoring for Ottawa (31 goals):

Peter Regin (1), Jason Spezza (6), Daniel Alfredsson (8), Milan Michalek (5), Mike Fisher (5), Alex Kovalev ( 6)

Toronto would actually have a higher scoring group if Kris Versteeg and his six goals was back in Kadri's spot and the fact that MacArthur, Grabovski and Kulemin form the highest-scoring line on either team is something Gretzky or Kreskin could never have predicted.

Overall, however, neither team enters this skirmish in the Battle of Ontario with goal scoring as a primary asset. The Senators rank 25th in the NHL on offence with 2.41 goals per game. The Leafs are 27th at 2.35, so if this game gets to 3-2 it'll be a barn burner

In the spotlight: 

Goalie Jonas Gustavsson will make his fifth straight start for the Leafs and has been excellent with a 1.75-goals-against-average and .944 save percentage.

More important than the statistics though is the way he's played. Gustavsson is a different goaltender this season. Rebounds don't fly off him like projectiles and he doesn't overplay as many second chances. He's been looking like the goalie so many teams badly wanted to sign when he was available a year ago. 

His only deficiency right now is that he can't score.

On the hot stove: 

The Senators had just 19 shots on goal in each of their first two games this week. They remedied that with 21 in the first period at Pittsburgh and 44 overall but still scored once and now have just 13 goals in their last eight games. Friday's game was there for the taking had the Senators been able to score early. They were the better team until a pair of penalties in the second and third period got Pittsburgh a pair of goals and all the momentum.

Ottawa has no shortage of players who haven't scored enough. The most alarming might be Nick Foligno, who had a great pre-season, leading to expectations of a 20 goal season on one of the top two. Instead he hasn't scored yet but he isn't alone in his  dry spell.

Nick Foligno: no goals in 23 games
Jarkko Ruutu: no goals in 20 games
Peter Regin: 1 goal in 23 games
Mike Fisher: 1 goal in 11 games
Milan Michaleck: 1 goal in 9 games

Outtakes:

Toronto has won five of the last six games in the Battle of Ontario and had won five straight until the Senators beat them 3-2 in the last game they played. The Leafs will hope a game against Ottawa launches another hot streak for Phil Kessel who has scored 14 career goals against the Senators, the only team he's in double digits against.

The Senators just don't score but especially when Pascal Leclaire is in goal. Ottawa has scored just 12 times in nine games Leclaire has played.

Another unflattering stat for the Senators: the top defensive pair of Sergei Gonchar and Chris Phillips play the most minutes and against all the top lines are both minus-12 and among the bottom six in the NHL in that stat.

From the stat pack:

So while we're on the topic of goal scoring or lack thereof, here are the top scoring teams in the month of November and how the Leafs and Senators rank with them

• 1. Philadelphia, 49
• 2. Washington, 42
• 3. Carolina, 40
• 19. Ottawa, 27
• 25. Toronto, 24

Stay close to the TV or you'll miss the goal in this tilt.

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