Search the Community

Your Buffalo Sabres will roll into sunny Florida this Tuesday night to take on the EC Champion Tampa Bay Lightning. The Sabres will look to continue their winning ways, going 3-1 and 4-2 recently. The team should be locked, stocked, and ready to go as they ride the high of a thrilling 3-2 win in which Rasmus scored in the final 16.8 to knock of a familiar face in Ryan Miller and Linus Ullmark made his presence known to the league, stopping 35/37 Vancouver shots, many of which were of very high quality. The youngsters are doing their part for Buffalo, as Eichel got his first 2 assists, Pysks made a b-e-a-utiful feed for the McGinn goal, and McCabe has seen his minutes climb from 13 minutes/game to 20 minute/game over the last few contests. The Lightning meanwhile, look to continue pulling themselves out of an early season funk. Coming off of another loss in which the offense was, again, lost, the Lightning look to forget their 1-0 loss to the Wild on Saturday and think back to their 3-0 record vs the Sabres instead. Tampa Bay has serious offensive issues right now, getting shutout 3/8 and held to 1 goal or less in 6/8 recently. If the Sabres are going to push for the playoffs, we have to beat teams when they're down. Especially playoff contending teams like Tampa. Beating the Lightning in Tampa, after a huge Saturday win, could be a launching point for this team. Shake off the demons from the 3 Tampa games earlier, and get a nice winning streak going into a pivotal match-up against the Panthers on Thursday night. This game should be intense. Look for Johnson to start, and possibly Vasilevskiy based on his last performance in Buffalo. Palat is injured (out 5-8 weeks, credit to 3Putt), and Colaiacovo is optimistic to return and replace Weber. Sabres look to juggle the lines again and get Ennis back into the grove. The 2nd and 3rd line look dangerous, and Moulson gets his opportunity again to play big minutes with O'Reilly. Game Preview Stats: Advanced Stats: Game 1 Advanced Stats: Game 2 Advanced Stats: Game 3 Team Comparison Graphs (CF% vs Scoring Chances)(Or any axis you want really) Sabres killing it in this one Monday's Practice Report Forwards: 26 Matt Moulson – 90 Ryan O'Reilly – 12 Brian Gionta 88 Jamie McGinn – 15 Jack Eichel – 63 Tyler Ennis 22 Johan Larsson – 28 Zemgus Girgensons – 23 Sam Reinhart 44 Nicolas Deslauriers – 17 David Legwand – 82 Marcus Foligno Defense: 4 Josh Gorges – 55 Rasmus Ristolainen 29 Jake McCabe – 46 Cody Franson 25 Carlo Colaiacovo– 3 Mark Pysyk 6 - Mike Weber 35 Linus Ullmark 31 Chad Johnson