Buffalo, N.Y. (WGR 550) - After leaving town riding a three-game point streak and playing relatively well, the Buffalo Sabres came back home from a three-game Western Conference road trip with just a 1-2-0 record.
With just three games remaining until the Christmas break, the Sabres will look to bounce back starting Tuesday night when they host the Columbus Blue Jackets at KeyBank Center.
Over the last week, the Sabres did have some mixed news on the injury front.
During a game last week Wednesday against the Colorado Avalanche, winger Jeff Skinner suffered an upper-body injury and was added to Injured Reserve the very next day.
However, coming back from out West, the Sabres did receive some even better news with the impending return of young winger Jack Quinn.
Sabres head coach Don Granato joined the "Jeremy and Joe Show" on Tuesday for his weekly appearance on WGR. Granato confirmed that Quinn would be making his first appearance of the year after recovering from a torn Achilles in the offseason.
"It is an injury that's not very common in the sport, so that makes it a little more tricky or delicate," said Granato of Quinn while chatting with Jeremy White. "It's been quite a last month, as he's ramped things up, and he's pretty much ramped it up full throttle. A lot of testing it to the point where obviously he's very comfortable, but so is everyone else. But it's a process, and I think it's a little different for each guy. Older guys are different than younger guys, everybody feels a little different. But for him, he's ramped it up for quite a while now."
The Sabres have had some struggles stringing wins together this season, partly because of a lack of confidence. Granato believes this confidence has returned, and will help his team return to form in the very near future.
"Right as the season started, I think everybody felt pressure, and then you had lots of injuries to complicate things. Then you really felt pressure," Granato said. "I believe now, and I say that because you're with these guys every day and you just sense it, you see it in their eyes. We're on the other side of that. You see there's a confidence, there's an underlying confidence in them that there wasn't three weeks ago."
One Sabres player that showed struggles early on, but has since returned to form is rookie goaltender Devon Levi. Levi was sent to the Rochester Americans just a few weeks ago, but returned after Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen fell ill, and has since been on fire in goal.
Granato says this is a credit to his resiliency.
"You see the resilience of young guys, and you say that, you think, 'OK, he needs Rochester, and he needs to stay there.' But you see the gained experience of him going through the grind of the start of the year, and we put him in four or five games in-a-row. He battles an injury and some self-doubt, and all the things that you need guys to battle to gain experience," Granato said of Levi. "He gets out of here for less than a week or just about a week, we didn't know we were gonna call him up that soon. Then he jumps back in here, and I think he's 3-0-1 since with some big wins."
Hear more from Granato's appearance during the "Jeremy and Joe Show" available in the player below:
