Boston, MA (WGR 550) - Despite all the losing the Sabres have done lately, they still remain only one point out of a playoff spot. Buffalo has lost five-of-six games and eight-of-nine on the road.
There have been times this season where goals have been plentiful for the Sabres, but now they're in a slump that has seen five goals in four games. The goal scorers? Victor Olofsson, Rasmus Ristolainen, Marco Scandella and Zemgus Girgensons.
On Sunday morning, Ralph Krueger said that Scandella still isn't ready to play due to the flu. He also said Johan Larsson will return after missing three games with an upper-body injury. Larsson will center a line with Marcus Johansson and Sam Reinhart.
Larsson was hot for about nine games, but has been held pointless in his last four. Reinhart has no goals in seven games, while Johansson has one goal in 23 games.
Coaches have been begging the Sabres forwards to make life more difficult for the opposition goalies. It'll be Tuukka Rask in goal on Sunday, who stood on his head to beat Buffalo in November. Krueger said, "We like our general net presence, we like the general threat to the net, but there's a few percentage points of grit in the offensive game that need to be added here for us to be successful."
Krueger never talks to a player about how long it's been since he scored a goal. Instead he said, "We focus on the things you can work on, not what's not happening. But one of the things I don't do when players aren't scoring is I don't tell them that they have to score. That's something that we don't speak about, so it's what can we control. What can we change, what can we work on and what we love about this team is the work ethic."
Linus Ullmark will be in net. He's given up just six goals in his last three starts, yet he's 1-2-0. Overall, he's lost four of his last five games.
In 22 homes games, the Bruins have only one regulation loss, but they are 13-1-8, meaning they're 13-9.
In two games, Boston has scored six goals against the Sabres, and the line of Patrice Bergeron, Brad Marchand and David Pastrnak have been in on all of them. In the two games, Marchand has two goals and three assists for five points, Pastrnak has a goal and three assists for four points and Bergeron has two goals and an assist for three points. The whole rest of the team has one goal and five assists.
Rask and Jaroslav Halak have stopped 62-of-64 shots. Boston's power play is three-of-six against the Sabres.
It's going to be hard for the Sabres to stay in the race if they don't do better than 1-7 against Boston, Tampa Bay and Toronto.
Join Brian Koziol for the pregame starting at 6:30 when he'll be joined by Krueger.
