Montreal, Quebec (WGR) – The Buffalo Sabres won’t have three of their seven defensemen for NHL Frozen Frenzy on Tuesday, where all 32 teams across the league are in action.

The Sabres are in Montreal to face the Canadiens in the first rematch of last year’s second-round matchup in the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

Sabres captain Rasmus Dahlin isn’t with the team. Dahlin left Monday’s game after grabbing his back and never returned. After the game Lindy Ruff said Dahlin would stay in Buffalo and receive treatment.

On Tuesday Matt Grzelcyk was place on injured reserve with an unknown injury. Conor Timmins is already on IR and has been in a walking boot. Dennis Gilbert has been called up from the Rochester Americans where he’s played four games with no points. He’ll get inserted into the lineup. He hasn’t played with the Sabres since getting into 25 games in the 2024-25 season.

Colten Ellis started Monday’s game, but was pulled by Ruff after he let in two bad goals in 26:26 of work. He made seven saves. Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen took over and had his best outing of the season. In 33:34 he stopped 13-of-14 shots. As of Tuesday morning Alex Lyon was still on IR, so with no morning skate, we don’t know who Ruff will go with. Luukkonen is 2-2-0 with a 3.67 goals against average and .812 save percentage. Ellis is 1-1-0 with a 3.19 goals against and .864 save percentage. At 3.67 the Sabres are 26th in the league.

Overall Buffalo is 3-3-0, but their penalty killing still hasn’t come around. They’re 30th at just 60%. After going 0-for-14 on the power play, Buffalo has gone 3-for-8.

Tage Thompson has four goals which is 11th in the NHL. He has seven points in his last five games. Thompson has 12 goals and 11 assists for 23 points in 20 career games against Montreal. Owen Power is tied for the teams scoring lead with Thompson. Power has one goal and six assists for seven points and took over for Dahlin on the No. 1 power play unit. Power is also averaging 26:07 of ice time.

For the second straight game, the Sabres will be facing the NHL’s worst power play. Florida came into Monday’s game with the worst, but they scored two power play goals dropping Montreal to 32nd at 5.9%. The Canadiens are also worse defensively than Buffalo allowing 3.80 goals per game which is 27th.

The Canadiens are 2-2-1, but have lost three out of four games. Jacob Fowler will be in net for his third consecutive game. He’s 1-1-0 with a 1.46 goals against and .938 save percentage.

What has hurt the Habs is Cole Caufield has been ice cold to start the season. He has only scored in one of his five games where he got two. He has no assists. Nick Suzuki leads the way with three goals and four assists for seven points in five games. In 21 career games against the Sabres the Canadiens captain has 26 points. Last year Jural Slofkovsky had a breakout season scoring 30 goals and 73 points. This year he has one goal and no assists.

Faceoff is set for 6:35 p.m., so Zach Jones and Derek Kramer will have an abbreviated pregame show on WGR, starting at 6 p.m. ET. There’ you will hear from Ruff and Beck Malenstyn.