Buffalo, N.Y. (WGR 550) – The Buffalo Sabres will be without Dylan Cozens and Mattias Samuelsson on Thursday against the Chicago Blackhawks. Both are day-to-day, but have a chance to play on Saturday.
Jeff Skinner will return to practice on Friday. Thursday will be the fourth game he’s missed with an upper-body injury.
Buffalo hosts the Chicago Blackhawks on Thursday, having won 4-of-6 games.
The problem for the Sabres is despite recent success, they’re still seven points out of the eighth and final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference. What the Sabres have done, while keeping pace, is watch the other teams play many of the games in-hand they had on Buffalo.
Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen will start his fourth-straight game for the Sabres on Thursday night. He’s only given up one goal in his last two games, and seven goals in his last five.
In those five games, Luukkonen is 4-1-0 with a 1.40 goals-against average and a .950 save percentage.
This is the second time this season the 24-year-old has played in, at least, four-straight games. In late October, Luukkonen played in five-straight games and went 3-2-0 with a 3.14 goals-against average and a .901 save percentage.
This season, Luukkonen is 10-9-2 with a 2.77 goals-against average and a .906 save percentage.
With both Cozens and Skinner out, Sabres head coach Don Granato wanted to put a player that plays hard and direct of each line. He did that with Kyle Okposo, Zemgus Girgensons and Eric Robinson.
The lines won’t be what you’d expect:
Forwards:
Benson – Thompson – Tuch
Girgensons – Mittelstadt – Quinn
Robinson – Krebs – Peterka
Olofsson – Greenway – Okposo
Defense:
R. Johnson – Clifton
Dahlin – Jokiharju
Power – E. Johnson
The Blackhawks won on Tuesday over the San Jose Sharks in a shootout, but that was only their second win in nine games.
Rookie sensation Connor Bedard has missed five games with a broken jaw. Bedard still leads the Hawks in scoring with 15 goals and 18 assists for 33 points in 39 games.
Chicago is 31st in the NHL in goals scored, 29th in goals-against, 31st on the power play, and 27th on the penalty kill.
Recently, Chicago has killed 9-of-10 penalties and gone 3-for-19 on the power play.
Join Mike Schopp and the Bulldog for pregame coverage on WGR starting at 6 p.m. EST when you’ll hear from Granato, Okposo and Erik Johnson.
