It’s the last week of games in the NHL regular season and your Winnipeg Jets will be using it as a series of tune up games as they get ready for the Stanley Cup Playoffs against four different non-playoff bound teams. First up on the docket are the Ottawa Senators.

The Jets will have just as much of a challenge of staying interested in these last handful of games and staying healthy in them more than anything else they’ll deal with this week. They had a nice rebound game on Saturday against Toronto where they didn’t dominate, but they did smother the Maple Leafs with strong physical play. Another challenge that will be posed to the Jets is finding a balance between being the right amount of snarly and intense, but not so much that players burn out before next week. One thing the Jets will be looking more for that they haven’t had the last few games is scoring from their top lines as Patrik Laine, Blake Wheeler, Paul Stastny and Mathieu Perreault have all been on various slumps that they’d like to snap out of this week.

Ottawa has lost seven of their last eight games in what has been an absolute mess of a season where their owner has talked about moving the club and moving the one superstar player that makes attending Sens games even worth attending, so much so that there is speculation that this could be Erik Karlsson’s last home game in Ottawa which is just absolute insanity. The Sens do have some decent young players that will get looks in this game like forwards Colin White and defenseman Thomas Chabot who are both 21 years old and seeing duty on the top line and top pairing. Beyond that though, the Sens are just playing out the string and going through the motions.

Winnipeg won their last game against the Senators back on December 3 with a 5-0 win in Winnipeg. In that game, the Jets had three power play goals. The Jets have a three game winning streak against Ottawa.

The Jets still have a little bit left to play for – second place in the West and even a faint hope of first in the Central division – and it’s unlikely they want to go into the playoffs with losses to non-playoff teams so they should come out motivated enough. Jets win 3-1.