Buffalo, N.Y. (WGR Sports Radio 550) - The Buffalo Sabres will host the Pittsburgh Penguins on Wednesday for their final home preseason game. This will be the last chance for some of the regular players to get into game action before opening night next Thursday against the New York Rangers.
Sabres defenseman Bo Byram participated in the morning skate, but won’t play. However, winger Zach Benson was not present for the morning skate on Wednesday.
"He’s got just a little bit of an ailment that we’re keeping him off the ice for," said Sabres head coach Lindy Ruff following the morning skate.
Ruff is expecting Benson to only be out short-term. Meanwhile, he's looking at Byram playing Friday night in the preseason finale in Pittsburgh.
In his first season with the Sabres, center Ryan McLeod set career highs for goals, assists and points. It’s the first time he’s put up a 20-goal campaign in his career. This was the second offseason where McLeod worked on his shooting, as it certainly worked for him last year.
For a good two-way player, 20 goals and 53 points are good totals. However, he thinks those totals can be even better this coming year.
"I’d like to bring more," McLeod said earlier this training camp. "I think I had a good last season, and I’m coming in with a lot of confidence. I feel like that should be the base floor now, and we build off that going forward."
McLeod isn’t comfortable standing at his locker talking about himself. He’d rather focus on the goals for the whole group, and not his goal total.
"It’s a nice milestone to get, but it’s not the year we wanted as a team," McLeod said. "I think if I come out and put up a good season, it’ll help us take the next step here.
"We’ve got to do the right things every day and make strides as a team."
McLeod says he was able to make better reads last season, and figured out how to use his body to be better defensively.
We all know the battle cry of the Sabres this season is to get better defensively. It only makes sense to ask one of the team’s best defensive players on how to accomplish that.
"It’s just buying in," McLeod said. "There are a lot of good players in this league, and if you give them too much time and space, they’re going to make some plays. We need to work on being hard and not cheat for offense too much."
Sabres defenseman Michael Kesselring was drafted by the Edmonton Oilers and he was a teammate of McLeod’s during their time with the Bakersfield Condors in the American Hockey League. McLeod was Edmonton's second-round pick (40th overall) in the 2018 NHL Draft.
McLeod likes the fact they’re teammates once again.
"I played with him in the Edmonton system for a little bit, so I know him pretty well," McLeod said of Kesselring. "His game has grown really well, and he looks pretty sweet out there. It’s going to be fun to see him out there, and I’m excited to play with him."
McLeod came to Buffalo last season in a trade with the Oilers after playing in the 2024 Stanley Cup Final. That meant he was playing hockey into June. Last season, though, the 26-year-old was done playing hockey two months earlier.
He, of course, wasn’t too happy about that,
"It sucks. It was a really long [offseason], and it’s not really fun watching those games on TV," McLeod said. "You want to be playing in them, so I have a chip on my shoulder this year trying to get us back. And as a group, everyone is pretty hungry to try to get a taste of that."
As for Ruff, he was happy to have McLeod on the team last season for a number of reasons.
"He’s a great skater, and I think with a bigger opportunity, his number went up," said Ruff on Wednesday following the morning skate. "With the number of guys we had out, he got elevated up the lineup and he took advantage of that. He took advantage of being on the power play, but with his speed, he can easily be a 20-goal guy for us and play a real important role."
One of the things I’ve noticed in the preseason games is the team seems to have cut down on the silly stick penalties and the bad offensive zone penalties. Ruff thinks he’s getting through to the players on that issue.
"Some of the penalties in the last five minutes of games and really trying to stay away from the offensive zone penalties, which just kill a team after a while," Ruff said.
"If you’re preventing goals with penalties, you’ve got to kill those off or situations where teammates are looking after each other or sometimes you’re being over aggressive and you have to take a penalty. The [Konsta] Helenius penalty type of thing, the offensive zone penalty that we’re trying to eliminate like a careless stick that gets into the hands, or you’re going in to forecheck and your stick’s in the air and you hit the guy in the side of the head and you’re taking a penalty. It’s better sticks. Just better game-time awareness where, 'This is a situation where I’ve got to make sure that I’m above the guy, I don’t reach in.' I think we’re in a better place.
"If you look at some of the penalties we took where we hit guys in the numbers, putting them headfirst into the boards, we’ve stayed away from those situations too."
WEDNESDAY’S LINES:
Forwards:
Thompson - Norris - Krebs
Zucker - McLeod - Tuch
Quinn - Kulich - Doan
Geertsen - Danforth - Malenstyn
Defense:
Dahlin - Kesselring
Johnson - Timmins
Bryson - Mrtka
Tune in to "Schopp and the Bulldog" for pregame coverage on WGR starting at 6 p.m. when you’ll hear more from Ruff, Josh Norris and Ryan Johnson.
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