Buffalo, NY (WGR 550) – The Buffalo Sabres started the season 3-1-0, but they had most of their lineup in against pretty much an AHL squad of the Pittsburgh Penguins and lost 5-3.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday Buffalo looked like a team that was just trying to get the preseason over with and jump into the regular season.<\/p>\n
Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen made his first start of the preseason. Alexandar Georgiev said the plan was for Luukkonen to play the first two periods and Georgiev the third, but Luukkonen had to leave after 20 minutes stopping 11 of 12 shots. Lindy Ruff said,<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018UPL\u2019 felt good getting into the game and after he made a couple of saves he just didn\u2019t feel quite right, so we took him out as a precaution and we\u2019ll see where he\u2019s at tomorrow. We really didn\u2019t want to risk anything.\u201d<\/p>\n
Michael Kesselring went to the locker-room right before the second period ended and never returned. Ruff said,<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s had an aggravation that flared up and we\u2019ll see where he\u2019s at tomorrow too. He\u2019s day-to-day, it\u2019s nothing serious, it\u2019s something he\u2019s been dealing with the whole camp.\u201d<\/p>\n
Buffalo now has four of their six defensemen out injured. Kesselring joins Bo Byrum, Owen Power and Mattias Samuelsson on the sideline. Ruff isn\u2019t concerned about that and thinks they\u2019re going to be OK,<\/p>\n
\u201cI do, I feel Byrum\u2019s ready to come back in, whether we play him or not, I think Power is really close to coming back in after a rehab skate. We don\u2019t know where Kesselring will be at, but I feel pretty confident that we\u2019re going to probably have them all back.\u201d<\/p>\n
Josh Norris had a pair of goals to give him three goals and two assists for five points in two preseason games. With Kesselring out Rasmus Dahlin played 27:07 and had a highlight reel power play goal in the third period.<\/p>\n
I haven\u2019t really liked what I\u2019ve seen from Georgiev in his first three games. He hasn\u2019t been the same goalie since he left the New York Rangers. In three preseason games he\u2019s played 140 minutes, is 0-2-0 with a 3.43 goals against and .884 save percentage. He allowed five goals in Detroit and three more on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Buffalo has one more preseason game Friday in Pittsburgh when they\u2019ll likely face the real Penguins with Sidney Crosby and Evgeny Malkin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Buffalo, NY (WGR 550) – The Buffalo Sabres started the season 3-1-0, but they had most of their…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":196473,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":["post-196472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196472"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196472\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/196473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}