“We want to be cautious with it too as well. There’s a lot of hockey to be played.”
Jeff Skinner was not named to the original Atlantic Division All-Star squad, but he still can be voted onto the team in the “Last Men In” that the NHL is doing. Each team has one player that fans can vote on for the last position in the division.
Skinner is the Sabre that fans can vote for, but he’s not at all concerned about the All-Star Game, “I don’t know, I just want to win games so for us I think it’s a good challenge tonight to get back on that track, so that’s the focus.”
When asked if he felt snubbed Skinner said, “There’s a lot of great players and they’ve got to fit a lot of great players in not a lot of spots, so that’s just the way it goes, but it’s not my focus, it was news for yesterday and we’ve got a challenge ahead of us and I want to try to get a win tonight.”
Skinner has 26 goals this season, but he only has one goal in five games.
With Eichel out, Evan Rodrigues will center Skinner and Sam Reinhart. Reinhart doesn’t have a goal in 11 games, but he’s accumulated 14 assists in that time. Reinhart has points in 14 out of 16 games.
Linus Ullmark will be in net. Ullmark hasn’t played since Dec. 22 when he shut out Anaheim, and he’s only played one of the last six games and two of the last nine. The Sabres haven’t had back-to-back games since the Ducks game and Housley said he was slated to play long before this, “He was ill, he had planned on playing in one of those games when he was ill, but we wanted to make sure he was ready, healthy and ready to go.”
Overall, Ullmark is 8-1-3 with a 2.71 goals-against average and .922 save percentage.
The healthy scratches will be Nate Beaulieu and Matt Hunwick. Lawrence Pilut returns after being scratched for two games.
The Sabres have lost three straight games and five out of six. That has dropped the Sabres to 12th in the NHL with a .600 points percentage.
Buffalo is tied with the Bruins for third in the Atlantic Division, six points in back of Toronto, but only one point ahead of Montreal.
Florida has won two straight games and four out of five, as well as six out of eight. James Reimer has won three straight games and has played three out of four, but it will be Sabre killer Roberto Luongo in net.
Luongo got tagged for three goals in 20 minutes of work in Detroit. Before that, he gave up four in a home loss to Montreal. He only gave up one goal in another game in Detroit, but then gave up five to the Leafs in Toronto.
Against Buffalo, Luongo is 20-8-0 with a 1.96 goals-against and .934 save percentage. He has five shutouts against the Sabres, and he stoned them in Florida’s 5-2 win here in mid-December.
The Panthers have a seven-game winning streak against the Sabres.
Florida had scored a power play goal in seven straight games before going 0-for-3 in Detroit.
Join Schopp and the Bulldog for the pre-game at 6:00 live from (716) Food and Sport when they’ll be joined by Phil Housley, Jeff Skinner and Evan Rodrigues.