St. Louis Blues vs Ottawa Senators, NHL Picks

This projection and current market action are supplementary and do not influence the final qualitative pick and analysis of today's game.

The Senators are the better team by nearly every measure that matters in the 2025-26 season, with a top-third offense generating strong shot volume and shooting efficiency running into a Blues defensive group that sits in the lower half of the league in goals allowed and cannot reliably stop what does get through. The special teams angle sharpens the case further, because Ottawa's above-average power play is facing one of the weakest penalty kills in the league, a mismatch that creates real, repeatable scoring opportunities beyond five-on-five play. Ottawa's faceoff dominance adds another layer, giving them a structural edge in possession that compounds over the course of a full game against a shot-starved Blues team that has been among the least productive offenses in the league all season. Binnington has been one of the more vulnerable full-time starters in the 2025-26 season, and the Senators' offense is built to expose exactly that kind of goaltending. The strongest counterargument is the fatigue and availability problem on the Ottawa side: they are on the back half of consecutive nights, Ullmark carries an injury designation, and Sanderson is out from the defensive group, all of which genuinely compress the gap between these two teams. That combination would swing the picture significantly if Ullmark could not go, but even accounting for that uncertainty, the Blues are a team that struggles to generate offense consistently, which limits how much damage they can do against any goaltending and keeps the structural edge with Ottawa across the full picture.

The case for the over rests on two compounding vulnerabilities, one on each side, that both point toward a higher-scoring game than the market might expect. Binnington has posted one of the weaker save percentages among full-time starters in the 2025-26 season, and he is facing an Ottawa offense that ranks in the upper third of the league in goals, shot volume, and shooting efficiency with a power play that can generate premium looks against one of the league's worst penalty kills. On the other side, Ottawa's goaltending has been near the bottom of the league in the 2025-26 season, even though their shot suppression has kept the goals-against near average by limiting how often opponents even test their netminder. The Blues offense is genuinely shot-starved and has struggled all season, but any pucks they do generate against an already-stressed Ullmark, who arrives fatigued and carrying an injury designation, carry real conversion potential. The strongest counterargument is Ottawa's elite shot suppression, which has consistently kept scoring rates down by controlling what the opposition can even attempt, and if that defensive structure holds tonight it could keep the Blues offense quiet enough to push the game toward a lower total. The counterweight to that is Binnington on the other end, because Ottawa does not need their defense to suppress everything when the opposing goaltender has been surrendering goals at a rate that places him among the league's weakest starters, and Ottawa's possession and power play advantages give them the tools to reach the net repeatedly even in a tight game.