Buffalo looked flat in one capital, will look to bounce back in the other capital<\/p>\n
Buffalo Sabres\u00a0(46-22-8) vs Washington Capitals (38-29-9)<\/p>\n
Puck Drop:\u00a07 pm ET | Capital One Arena, Washington DC<\/p>\n
TV:\u00a0MSG-B, ESPN+<\/p>\n
Radio: WGR 550, Sirius XM (app)<\/p>\n
Know Your Opponent<\/p>\n
Washington Capitals<\/p>\n
Record:\u00a038-29-9\u00a0| 85 PTS<\/p>\n
Last Game:\u00a07-3 loss against New Jersey Devils; 6-2-2 in last ten games<\/p>\n
Division Ranking: 6th, Metropolitan<\/p>\n
PP:\u00a024th, 18.0% (41\/228) [Sabres: 15th, 21.2% (48\/226)]<\/p>\n
PK: 14th, 79.7% (188\/236) [Sabres: 5th, 81.9% (172\/210)]<\/p>\n
What to Watch<\/p>\n
1. Don\u2019t panic!<\/p>\n
With the Sabres now this close to finally breaking a record fourteen-year postseason drought, it does look like they\u2019re holding their sticks that bit tighter. Against Ottawa they never really got into the game and weren\u2019t able to go around the Sens clogging up the neutral zone. Everyone\u2019s going to be trying their own way to stop Sabres\u2019 \u201criver hockey\u201d, but Buffalo just needs to play their own game. Oh yeah, stop overpassing and get some shots on net too. <\/p>\n
With the Red Wings losing to the Rangers earlier today, the playoffs are now confirmed!!<\/p>\n
2. Ruff knows the problem<\/p>\n
Lindy Ruff put the Sabres through something close to a bag skate on Friday after their unimpressive performance Thursday night. He\u2019ll get them right and ready for Saturday. <\/p>\n
\u201cI thought we were slow. I don\u2019t want to make excuses, but maybe the pressure of being there, just a little bit of that, caught up to the guys. Today was about just getting up to pace, playing fast, playing our game. I thought the energy was great. I thought the pace was great. I thought we skated better today than we did last night.\u201d<\/p>\n
3. Cold spells need breaking too<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a couple of Sabres forwards that have gone cold and Lindy shook up the lines on Friday to spark a few players. In their last ten games. Tuch went 2-2-4, McLeod has 0-2-2, Doan 2-1-3, Zucker 2-1-3, Norris 1-3-4 among others. The Sabres are going to need to find their sco ing touch again to close out the season strong. <\/p>\n
Projected Lineups<\/p>\n
Buffalo Sabres <\/p>\n
Forwards <\/p>\n
Peyton Krebs \u2013 Tage Thompson \u2013 Josh Doan
Jason Zucker \u2013 Josh Norris \u2013 Alex Tuch
Zach Benson \u2013 Ryan McLeod \u2013 Jack Quinn
Jordan Greenway \u2013 Tyson Kozak \u2013 Beck Malenstyn<\/p>\n
Defense<\/p>\n
Mattias Samuelsson \u2013 Rasmus Dahlin
Bowen Byram \u2013 Owen Power
Logan Stanley \u2013 Zach Metsa<\/p>\n
Goaltenders <\/p>\n
Alex Lyon (projected starter), Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen <\/p>\n
Washington Capitals<\/p>\n
Forwards <\/p>\n
Alex Ovechkin \u2013 Dylan Strome \u2013 Connor McMichael
Hendrix Lapierre \u2013 Pierre-Luc Dubois \u2013 Tom Wilson
Anthony Beauvillier \u2013 Justin Sourdif \u2013 Ryan Leonard
Brandon Duhaime \u2013 David Kampf \u2013 Ivan Miroshnichenko<\/p>\n
Defense<\/p>\n
Martin Fehervary \u2013 Rasmus Sandin
Jakob Chychrun \u2013 Trevor van Riemsdyk
Cole Hutson \u2013 Matt Roy<\/p>\n
Goaltenders <\/p>\n
Logan Thompson (projected starter), Charlie Lindgren <\/p>\n
\n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Buffalo looked flat in one capital, will look to bounce back in the other capital Buffalo Sabres\u00a0(46-22-8) vs…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":540875,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5114],"tags":[191,5,4,190,109,5222],"class_list":{"0":"post-540874","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-washington-capitals","8":"tag-capitals","9":"tag-hockey","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-washington","12":"tag-washington-capitals","13":"tag-washingtoncapitals"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116348356357419450","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=540874"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540874\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/540875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=540874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=540874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=540874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}