Raleigh, NC (WGR 550) – On Sunday before the Buffalo Sabres left for Raleigh, they took the ice in Buffalo and had some good news and some bad news.<\/p>\n
Goaltender Alex Lyon was back on the ice with his teammates, but Josh Norris is no longer day-to-day as Lindy Ruff told reporters that he\u2019s now week-to-week. Ruff said,<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t really peg a timeframe, but he\u2019s not really recovering the way we had hoped.\u201d<\/p>\n
Norris has missed 27 games this season with three different injuries.<\/p>\n
Lyon has missed nine games with an injury and Ruff said with four games in six days, Lyon is going to be in the crease,<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019ll return sometime this week for sure, we\u2019re finalizing what our goalie plan will be, but he\u2019ll definitely play for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n
In his last last seven appearances before getting hurt Lyon was 6-0-0 with a 2.12 goals against and .921 save percentage.<\/p>\n
Colten Ellis has been alternating games with Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen and he seems to be slipping a little in his play.<\/p>\n
Ruff confirmed that Konsta Helenius will play his first NHL game in Carolina. The 19-year-old has been selected to play in the AHL All-Star game along with Isak Rosen and Zac Jones. In 34 games with the Rochester Americans he has nine goals and 21 assists for 30 points. In the last two seasons he has 99 games scoring 23 goals and 42 assists for 65 points. Ruff said,<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m very excited, we\u2019ve seen what (Noah) Ostlund has done to help us another young prospect that we think really highly of, he should be excited to get into the lineup.\u201d<\/p>\n
Helenius was the 14th overall pick in the 2024 NHL Draft while Ostlund was the 16th overall pick in 2022.<\/p>\n
Lindy Ruff usually doesn\u2019t venture too far from his lane but he talked about what a miserable day it was and was because of the Bills loss Saturday to the Denver Broncos in overtime. The team and the fans are on fire about the call calling a ball thrown to Brandin Cooks an interception instead of a catch. Ruff did want to chime in,<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the play that Sean (McDermott) was talking about is eerily like our \u201cNo Goal\u2019 in \u201899, you know, what\u2019s the rule? We\u2019ve had that debate and I totally get it.<\/p>\n
If I look at the football game against the Jags and they took two or three minutes to decide if the clock had expired, why wouldn\u2019t it take two or three minutes to decide whether this guy was down on the ground with the ball and he had been touched and is that a catch? Why was that so definitive so fast and I don\u2019t know enough about it to even be standing here commenting, but I just felt like most Buffalo fans that you were stabbed in the gut with a knife.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ruff admitted he\u2019s a biased Bills fan like everybody else.<\/p>\n
The Sabres have picked up points in 6-of-7 games going 5-1-1. Going into Sunday Buffalo is in the top Wild Card position with a points percentage of .606. With six straight wins Boston is next at .592.<\/p>\n
Carolina leads the Metropolitan Division and are second in the Eastern Conference with a points percentage of .653. The Hurricanes have also gone 5-1-1 in their last seven.<\/p>\n
Buffalo almost never wins in Carolina and lost here in November, 6-3. In Buffalo the Sabres sent the fans home happy with a 4-1 win.<\/p>\n
The Sabres have lost 12 straight in Raleigh going 0-10-2 since 2016.<\/p>\n
In net for Carolina, Brandon Bussi is 17-3-1 with a 2.25 goals against and .905 save percentage. Freddie Andersen is 7-10-3 with a 3.25 goals against and .869 save percentage.<\/p>\n
Sebastian Aho is their leading scorer with 17 goals and 33 assists for 50 points in 49 games.<\/p>\n
Join Brian Koziol and me for the pregame starting at 12:30 when you\u2019ll hear from Ruff and Helenius.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Raleigh, NC (WGR 550) – On Sunday before the Buffalo Sabres left for Raleigh, they took the ice…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":415664,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-415663","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-nhl","9":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415663","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=415663"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415663\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/415664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=415663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=415663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=415663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}