RAYmember me?

Ray Emery has been waiting for this one.

The Ottawa Senators will visit the Wachovia Center tonight, in Emery’s first every game against his former team. Emery played in Ottawa from 2002-08 and left on a sour note, to say the least.

This is Emery’s first chance to ‘stick’ it to Ottawa and their organization. All of the rumors, the turmoil, the negativity that surrounded Razor while he was in Canada’s Capital can be put further behind him tonight.

Did Emery make mistakes? Sure. Did he play the perfect teammate? Of course not. But, the media bashed him, his teammates bashed him and the organization treated him like a second class citizen.

Without a doubt, Emery has been looking forward to this game.

It may be too early to completely buy-in to Emery’s turn-around, but, from what I have seen so far, Emery is very quiet in net, he hasn’t caused any problems and it’s really hard to see that this is the same guy I read so much about while he was in Ottawa and Russia.

Emery, 9-3-1, ranks 10th in the league with a 2.27 goals-against average and is tied for eighth with a .922 save percentage and his play as mirrored the play of his team in front of him.

The Flyers come into tonight’s game on a roll and have won four games in a row.

Ryan Parent, James van Riemsdyk, Danny Briere and Ole-Kristian Tollefsen all practiced this week, but O-KT and Parent are listed as doubful. Rookie defenseman Oscar Bartuilis has been re-called and will make his NHL debut, pairing with Danny Syvret as the fifth and sixth d-men. David Laliberte has been sent down to Adirondack to make room for Briere.

The Flyers top-6 look like this

Hartnell-Richards-Giroux; JVR-Carter-Briere

“The standings don’t reflect it but the Flyers are the sixth-best team in the NHL, yet fourth in their division. They rank 14th in points but are sixth with a .679 percentage of points earned per game. No team has played fewer than the Flyers’ 14 games. They lead the NHL by scoring on 26.6 percent of their power plays, are second with 3.57 goals per game and 34.4 shots per game, fifth in outscoring teams with 1.27-to-1 ratio in 5-on-5 play. They are also ninth-best in allowing only 2.57 goals per game. They Flyers are good, and hot right now.” -NHL.com

Interesting fact – the Senators lead the NHL in misconducts and penalties, all-in-all, it’s going to be a very intriguing game.