Salt Lake City, Utah (WGR 550) – It was just eight days ago that Michael Kesselring and Josh Doan got to play against the Utah Mammoth and their old teammates. On Wednesday they get the opportunity to do it in Salt Lake City and Kesselring is happy to be back, but said he got used to going against his friends pretty quickly,<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was weird at first, but honestly I felt pretty comfortable pretty quick it was more giggling at some of those guys as they were coming down on me, so I\u2019m excited to play them again tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kesselring knows that he hasn\u2019t played well in his six games since coming back from a knee injury. He said he needs to improve all aspects of his game,<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s everything, I haven\u2019t been very good, so it\u2019s been getting comfortable with the knee and keep growing, learning the system, getting comfortable with new teammates, so it\u2019s time to get going, I\u2019m comfortable enough now, so I\u2019ve just got to get my legs moving, be simple, be heavy and the rest of my game will take off from there.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 82 games last season Kesselring had seven goals and 22 assists for 29 points. He can boom a shot just as hard as Tage Thompson can and he said the offensive is going to come for him,<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve had a few Grade-A’s and I know if I get enough of those looks, I\u2019m going to score on them, so I\u2019m not too worried about the offense.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lindy Ruff wanted to get the team to Salt Lake City a day early so they could settle in and practice on Tuesday. There\u2019s also elevation to get used to. Josh Doan has enjoyed being back,<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been nice seeing some former teammates and people you\u2019ve worked with the past couple of years and I\u2019ve gotten the chance to check out some spots from last year, so it\u2019s been nice to come back for the past couple of days.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Sabres opened their four-game road trip with a 6-3 loss in Carolina. They\u2019re the only team in the NHL that hasn\u2019t won on the road (0-3-2) and they now have the worst record in the Eastern Conference, four points out of a playoff spot. Buffalo has lost three in a row and have just one win in seven games. If they drop the final three games on this trip, they could find themselves too far back to recover. Kesselring understands the urgency,<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no excuses in our locker-room, we\u2019ve got to find ways to win hockey games, so I think it\u2019s simple and direct, we have a lot of skill, so our skill is going to take over if we play our systems the right way and play hard and are comfortable in low scoring games so we\u2019ve had enough time to starting figuring it out and we need to buckle down here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Colten Ellis will play in his second NHL game. He made his NHL debut on Oct. 22 making 29 saves on 31 shots in a 4-2 win over the Detroit Red Wings.<\/p>\n
Buffalo\u2019s power play has gone ice cold going 0-for-9 in the last four games and 3-for-28 in the last 10 games. That has dropped them to 24th in the league.<\/p>\n
The Sabres still lead the league in penalty killing at 89.6%. They\u2019ve only given up two goals with the extra man in the last five games killing 12-of-14 penalties.<\/p>\n
No team in the NHL has done more damage to the Sabres than Utah. Not only has the Mammoth beaten the Sabres 2-1, but they\u2019ve lost 5-of-6 games around that win. Four of those losses have come to the Sabres Eastern Conference foes the Tampa Bay Lightning, Toronto Maple Leafs, Montreal Canadiens and Ottawa Senators. After Karel Vejmeka slammed the door against the Sabres getting the shutout, Utah has given up 15 goals in their last three games.<\/p>\n
Vejmelka is 7-4-0 with a 2.91 goals against and .881 save percentage while Vitek Vanecek is 2-3-0 with a 2.85 goals against and .875 save percentage.<\/p>\n
Both goaltenders are Sabre killers. Vanecek is 12-2-1 with a 2.18 goals against and .922 save percentage while Vejmelka is 5-2-1 with a 1.75 goals against and .941 save percentage.<\/p>\n
JJ Peterka has hit the skids going pointless in his last five games. Overall he\u2019s scored four goals and six assists for 10 points in 16 games.<\/p>\n
Nick Schmaltz leads Utah with nine goals and 10 assists for 19 points in 16 games.<\/p>\n
Join Brian Koziol and me for the pregame starting at 8:00 when you\u2019ll hear from Ruff, Kesselring, Doan and Ryan McLeod.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Salt Lake City, Utah (WGR 550) – It was just eight days ago that Michael Kesselring and Josh…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":288944,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[88,216],"class_list":{"0":"post-288943","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-music"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288943","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=288943"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288943\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/288944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=288943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=288943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=288943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}