Hold Markstrom and Gudas for Ottawa, and let Schmid finish the homestand

Paul Maurice is playing this one exactly right, and I'll take the patience every time. Jacob Markstrom and Radko Gudas are both "making improvements," and the target for their return is Ottawa on Oct. 21.

Nobody is rushing a starting goalie or his most physical defenseman back for a Saturday home game against Seattle, especially with three days off coming right after it. You don't burn a body to win one game in the middle of October.

The cost of waiting is real, though, and most of it is sitting in the crease.

Lineup watch:

• In net: Akira Schmid stays the guy for the end of the homestand. He won in Columbus, and he gets Seattle tonight.
• The backup: Cooper Black, the 6-foot-8 goalie who sat behind Schmid the last two games, went back to Charlotte on Friday. Sending him down tells you Markstrom is closer than the injury designation suggests.
• On the back end: Uvis Balinskis keeps the Gudas spot on the third pair.
• Out: Markstrom and Gudas, both day-to-day.
• Coming back: both of them, in Ottawa. "We'd expect both of them to be able to play in Ottawa," Maurice said.

The number: 11.1, which is how many minutes Balinskis played against Vancouver on Thursday, 5.2 fewer than he got in Columbus, per NHL data. Gustav Forsling went the other way, up 3.7 minutes to 23.3.

That's the bench talking: in a one-goal game, Maurice leaned on his top pair and let the third pair ride short, and it worked, 3-2 in overtime.

But you can't play Forsling 23 minutes every night and expect him fresh in March. Gudas coming back fixes that, because he had 13 hits and 11 blocked shots through seven games. Those are the Ferda plays that let the top guys catch their breath on a long night.

The crease is the bigger gap. Markstrom is at .905 with a 2.03 goals-against average through five games, while Schmid is at .878 and 3.25 through four appearances, per NHL data. Those are small samples, both of them, but tonight that's the difference between needing three goals and needing four.

Here's the good news, though. Brady Tkachuk is carrying the room right now with back-to-back hat tricks, and he takes a run at a third tonight. When your best forward is scoring like that, you can afford to be patient with everybody else on the injury list.

And look at where the timeline lands: Ottawa is Brady's first trip back to the building where he wore the C.

If Maurice gets this right, the cats walk in there with their starting goalie and their meanest defenseman back, on the night the whole hockey world is watching. That's a much better night to be whole than a random Saturday in Sunrise.

Pabs' read: Hold them both until Ottawa, because a 4-2-2 team with three days off doesn't need heroes in the middle of October. It needs Markstrom right for November.