Boston, MA (WGR 550) - On Saturday morning in Boston, Lindy Ruff had some bad news about his No. 1 center Josh Norris. The Buffalo Sabres head coach said,
“He’s going to miss a significant amount of time and I don’t know what amount that is for sure, but he’s still being evaluated.”
Ruff would not say what the injury is, but did say,
“It’s an upper-body, it’s nothing related to what he’s had in the past.”
Ruff said he had an opportunity to speak with his injured center and as you can imagine, he’s devasted,
“He’s pretty disappointed, I spent a good time talking to him and he’s just disappointed. He put a lot of work in this summer and it’s just a tough injury.”
Owen Power is with the team and took part in the optional morning skate. Ruff said he’d see how he feels afterwards, but he may play.
Ruff confirmed that Zach Benson was released from the hospital on Friday and is improving. He is not on the trip.
Moving onto Game 2 in Boston on Saturday night, the Sabres know that they must improve at the offensive end of the ice and Ruff said,
“We’ve got to get to the other team’s goaltender a little bit better. I thought we did a good job with that last year and we were missing that netfront and that second effort around netfront to make it really tough on the opposition’s goaltender.
“I thought defensively, we played a real strong game, but offensively we just left too much out there.”
With Norris not available for the power play, Ryan McLeod will get the first opportunity with the first unit. Ruff said,
“He’s a good transporter bringing the puck up ice which will help us on entries. His play making ability is good, we like a left handed player on that side.
“We’re going to take a look at it, obviously it’s we’re going to evaluate pretty short-term and we’ve got a couple of other options we could try, but we feel right now that he’s probably our best guy.”
The Bruins are off to a good start under new head coach Marco Sturm. They walked into Washington and beat the Capitals 3-1 and then in their home opener, they edged the Chicago Blackhawks 4-3 in overtime.
Their big goal scorer David Pastrnak has four points in the first two games. Jeremy Swayman struggled last season, but he stopped 35-of-36 shots in Washington. Ruff said,
“They’ve still got the offensive of a Pastrnak of a (Pavel) Zacha who’s got an unbelievable shot. You’ve got a couple of ‘D’ back there that are joining the rush making it really tough on the opposition with (Charlie) McAvoy and (Mason) Lohrei and I think you have a little bit of a different makeup with the third and fourth line where they’re really heavy around the net, a lot of pucks to the net, so we’re going have to be strong around the paint.”
Join Brian Koziol for the pregame starting at 6:00 when you’ll hear from Ruff, Alex Tuch and Bo Byram.