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PITTSBURGH — Derick Brassard got a chance to sit down for dinner with some of his former Ottawa Senators teammates Thursday night.

He won’t get the opportunity to face them Friday night at the PPG Paints Arena.

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As the Senators prepared to play the Pittsburgh Penguins for the first time since the veteran centre was traded Feb. 23 in a deal that brought Ottawa a 2018 first-round pick and goalie prospect Filip Gustavsson, Brassard was looking forward to seeing some familiar faces in the game.

Sidelined with an undisclosed lower-body injury that forced him to miss his fourth straight game Thursday when the Penguins were on the road against Columbus, Brassard is listed as day-to-day.

“I’m going to get the chance to play against the Senators again,” Brassard said in a telephone interview. “I’m aiming (to be back) for the first game of the playoffs. Hopefully, I can be ready (for next week).

“It would be nice to play against my former team, but right now I just feel a lot of frustration just not being capable of playing in the past week or so because the past five, six or seven games before that, I felt that was when I was starting to feel more comfortable. I was turning the corner with my new team.”