The Buffalo Sabres didn’t hold a morning skate on Friday as they prepare for Game 2 of their back-to-back series with the Washington Capitals at KeyBank Center.
Ralph Krueger has been throwing out hints that both of his goalies will play in the two games. Carter Hutton played on Thursday night in a 6-4 loss, and it could be Linus Ullmark's turn on Friday.
“I don’t want to confirm anything until game-time, but you guys could take a pretty good guess there that we’ll be splitting most of the back-to-backs this year, but we’ll finalize that at game time,” the Sabres head coach said with a wry smile in his Zoom conference call.
Last season, Ullmark was 17-14-3 with a 2.81 goals-against average and .911 save percentage.
Eric Staal left Thursday’s game after being hit in the head by Nic Dowd. Dowd received a two-minute penalty for the hit, but will not be suspended by NHL's Department of Player Safety. Krueger said he wouldn’t rule Staal out for the game, but did say if he doesn’t go, Riley Sheahan will move to center.
Kyle Okposo will miss his second straight game with a lower-body injury.
“We’re hoping he gets back in the next few days, so he could be day-by-day or he could be three or four days, somewhere in that range,” Krueger said.
Rasmus Dahlin played more minutes on Thursday than any other Sabres player. Dahlin skated 25:25, which was over three minutes more than Rasmus Ristolainen. Krueger thinks they got carried away with how much he played.
“Dahls [Dahlin] ended up with a lot of minutes because we were down and he is that creative spirit with his offensive strength,” Krueger said. “You could see some fatigue on some of the shifts defensively, but those minutes were decided primarily by the score and what we were pushing for.”
You could tell on Thursday that the Sabres were rusty after having 10 months in-between games.
Dylan Cozens played mostly on the right wing in his NHL debut, but he did get a few shifts late in the game at center. Krueger thought his rookie showed quite well.
“We loved the way Dylan entered yesterday," Krueger said. "He was extremely responsible, you could really see how smart he is in both directions and you could see the center experience in him.”
The Sabres did score four goals against the Capitals, and there are going to be some games where that should be more than enough.
“We’ve talked about being able to claw back and score, so we’re expecting a much better game tonight, and one of the reasons is the second half of the game when we got our legs under us and simplified things,” Krueger said.
By the end of the game, Krueger felt the scoring chances were about even and he credits the firepower the team has.
Buffalo will have to do a much better job against the Nicklas Backstrom line on Friday. Backstrom had a goal and an assist, while T.J. Oshie had a goal and two assists and Alex Ovechkin had two assists.
Join Mike Schopp and the Bulldog for the Paul William Beltz Pregame Show starting at 6 p.m. EST, when they’ll be joined by Krueger, Ullmark and Tobias Rieder.
