Ottawa Senators’ Vladimir Tarasenko to miss game vs. Stars due to family matter
The Ottawa Senators announced that winger Vladimir Tarasenko will miss Friday’s game against the Dallas Stars to attend to a family matter.
Roster update: With the team’s support, #Sens forward Vladimir Tarasenko will miss tonight’s game in Dallas as he attends to a family matter.
Rourke Chartier, who was expected to be one of the team's two scratches, will dress in Tarasenko's place.
There has been no word as to what the family matter is for Tarasenko. It’s assumed that the details of that will remain private unless the Senators or Tarasenko disclose them at a later date.
Tarasenko, 32, is having a nice bounceback season with the Senators, with 6 goals and 13 assists for 19 points in 24 games. That puts him on pace for 64 points in an 82 game season, which is a big improvement on the 50 he got last season between his stints with the St. Louis Blues and New York Rangers.
Despite just six goals so far this season, Tarasenko has been one of the better goal scorers in the NHL. Since the start of the 2020-21 season, Tarasenko’s 1.03 5v5 goals per 60 minutes is tied for 27th with among forwards with at least 2,500 minutes played with Chris Kreider, Ryan Hartman, and William Nylander.
Tarasenko was the 16th overall pick of the Blues in the 2010 NHL Draft, and went on to play parts of 11 seasons with the Blues, winning a Stanley Cup with them in 2019. He was then dealt to the Rangers before the 2023 trade deadline, and then signed his current one-year, $5 million contract with the Senators in the following offseason.
The Senators also announced that center Rourke Chartier will be replacing Tarasenko in the lineup after he was originally slated to be a healthy scratch. Chartier has 1 goal and 1 assist for 2 points in 24 games with the Sens this season.
The Sens will hope to snap their back-to-back losses heading in to Friday’s game against the Stars, which starts at 8 p.m. EST. They currently sit in last in the Atlantic Division with an 11-13-0 record, and are 11 points out of the final wild card spot, although they do have five games in hand on both wild card teams.