Buffalo, N.Y. (WGR 550) – The Buffalo Sabres won’t have to play against Jack Eichel on Saturday night. Vegas Golden Knights head coach Bruce Cassidy says Eichel still isn’t ready to come back from a knee injury.
Eichel has missed 18 games with the injury. In the 42 games he’s played this season, the center has 19 goals and 25 assists for 44 points.
Vegas' leading scorer Mark Stone is also out long-term. He has 53 points in 56 games this season.
The Sabres beat the Golden Knights, 5-2, in Vegas back on Dec. 15. Devon Levi started that game and made 33 saves in the win.
This time it's Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen in goal for the eighth straight game. He’s played 11 out of 12 games and 17-of-19.
This season, Luukkonen is 18-15-2 with a 2.46 goals-against average and a .914 save percentage.
The Winnipeg Jets visit Buffalo on Sunday, and Luukkonen hasn’t played on back-to-back nights all season. With both games being at home, Sabres head coach Don Granato says that could change.
"We’ll wait to see how tonight goes, take that information and make a decision based on that," said Granato following Saturday's morning skate. "I’m not committing to anything tomorrow night yet, and we’ll see how he feels after the game and into tomorrow morning."
Buffalo has won 4-of-5 games and 6-out-of-9, but that Sabres haven’t gotten them anywhere. The Sabres are still 10 points behind the Tampa Bay Lightning and 12 points back of the Detroit Red Wings for the final two Eastern Conference Wild Card spots.
Detroit has won 7-of-10 games.
In 2024, the Sabres are 15th in the NHL with a points percentage of .591. In that time, what was a horrendous power play is 15th at 21.5%. In the last six games, Buffalo is 6-of-18.
"We’ve changed some subtleties, but you don’t want to blow things up because we weren’t respecting some subtleties that need to happen - positioning and working for each other," Granato said.
"The first power play [Thursday] was very sloppy for a minute, and in that situation, you should probably change. But you could see they’re still carrying greater confidence, and had that been a month ago, they would get really frustrated. They did not get frustrated. They were sloppy, they were mad at themselves and they said, 'You know what, we can do this. Let’s get the puck and we can score a goal.' You saw that conviction and confidence after 50 seconds or more of being sloppy, and that was a shot that showed a lot of conviction by [Tage Thompson] that can score, but hasn’t scored a lot."
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Granato says putting Jordan Greenway and Kyle Okposo on one the units has helped a lot with their net-front presence.
The penalty kill had been going well, and is 10th in the league since Jan. 1, but it’s slipped lately, allowing a power play goal in four-consecutive games, killing just 8-of-13 penalties, which is only 61.5%,
Casey Mittelstadt made a great pass to set up Rasmus Dahlin for the overtime-winning goal on Thursday, but he hasn’t scored a goal in six games, and has just one goal in 15 games. He has just two assists in 11 games.
One weird stat that is still holding is Jacob Bryson has played 14 games and the team is 11-3-0. I’ve liked his game, and I think he has improved quite a bit from last season.
Thompson has been right at the top of his game for a while now, and it’s finally starting to show up on the scoresheet. Thompson has two goals in two games and three goals in six.
The one player that has stayed fairly consistent this season is Alex Tuch. He has 16 points in his last 22 games.
Dahlin is, once again, the Sabres' leading scorer with 15 goals and 31 assists for 46 points. That ranks him eighth amongst all NHL defensemen. His 15 goals is tops amongst defensemen.
Erik Johnson isn’t quite ready to play, but he will be under consideration for Sunday.
Things haven’t been going too well for Vegas lately. They’ve lost 4-of-5 games and 6-out-of-8. That all has Vegas second in the Pacific Division, 10 points back of the Vancouver Canucks, one point ahead of the Edmonton Oilers and three points in front of the Los Angeles Kings.
Good defense and goaltending with timely scoring won the Knights the Stanley Cup last season, but they’re 10th in team defense with a goals-against average of 2.83.
Adin Hill has been playing a lot in net, going in 10-of-13 games. Hill has excellent numbers, going 15-6-2 this season with a 2.38 goals-against average and a .923 save percentage. That save percentage is second in the NHL.
Jonathan Marchessault has 32 goals in 60 games for Vegas.
Join Brian Koziol for pregame coverage on WGR starting at 6 p.m. EST when you’ll hear from Granato, Mittelstadt and Tuch.
