The New York Rangers have the perfect opportunity to get on a roll when they take on the Buffalo Sabres at Madison Square Garden. The Sabres have the worst record in the NHL and have lost 14 games in a row. It’s also a perfect opportunity for the team to have a letdown and lose to a team they should beat. We’ve seen it before this season and they cannot let it happen again.
Keith Kinkaid will be in goal for the second straight game and Brett Howden will not play, replaced in the lineup by Julien Gauthier. Howden has been placed on the NHL’s list of players unavailable due to the league’s COVID protocol. He joined Phil Di Giuseppe who remains on that list.
It will be Kris Knoblauch behind the bench for the fourth straight game. He’s starting to do more coaching than just serving as David Quinn’s go-between. While he made sure that everyone knew the Kinkaid call was made by Quinn and Benoit Allaire, he is definitely running the bench and sending out lines. In the last game, he relied heavily on the top two lines as Quinn has done in the past.
Knoblauch did own up to not allotting as much ice time to the Chytil-Lafrenière-Kakko kid line as he should have, saying “They deserved more ice time than they got.” He said that he talked to the trio and owned up to it. “I talked to them, discussed a coach’s mindset…often coaches make mistakes, players make mistakes on the ice and so do coaches.” He worked with them, looking at videos and said that “when the three are skating and checking they are really effective..they are really close to capitalizing…they are really close to contributing more offensively.”
After two excellent defensive outings against the Capitals and that blowout win over the Flyers, the Sabres should present not much of a challenge. Beware.