Rangers vs Sabres preview and live conversation

The New York Rangers return home to Madison Square Garden after an unexpected day off and a personnel scare, all related to COVID-19.  Their game Saturday with the Ottawa Senators was postponed due to an outbreak on that team and for a few hours it looked like Mika Zibanejad was headed to the COVID protocol list due to a positive test.  It turned out to be a false positive and the center will be in the lineup on Sunday versus Buffalo.

It’s Alexandar Georgiev in goal for the Rangers.  The only other lineup change is that Jarred Tinordi will be in the lineup, the question is who he will be replacing.  The assumption is that it will be Nils Lundkvist.

After an excellent 5-1-1 start, the Sabres have come down to earth, losing seven of their last nine.  They have been hit hard by injuries with  Craig Anderson (upper body), Victor Olofsson (undisclosed), Alex Tuch (shoulder), Casey Mittelstadt (upper body), Henri Jokiharju (lower body) all out of the lineup.

Their leading scorer is Rasmus Asplund with four goals and 10 points. Jeff Skinner is one of three Sabres with five goals.  Like the Rangers, they are in the middle of the pack when it comes to special teams, 18.2% on the power play and 80% on the penalty kill.  The Rangers are 19.6% on the PP and 78% on the PK.

While the Rangers are averaging 28.1 shots per game, third fewest in the NHL, the Sabres are only slightly better at 28.5%.

It’s going to be fun watching these two teams in the faceoff circles. The Rangers are 31st in the league with a 45.7% success rate while the Sabres are dead least at 44%.  If the Rangers lose the faceoff battle, it really is a problem, no matter what the coach says.

Projected lineups

Georgiev has very good lifetime stats versus Buffalo. His won-lost record is 2-2 but he has a Goals Against Average of 2.29 and a .930 Save Percentage.  The Rangers were 6-1-1 last season against the Sabres.

NEW YORK RANGERS

20 Kreider – 93 Zibanejad – 21 Goodrow
10 Panarin – 16 Strome – 24 Kakko
13 Lafrenière– 72 Chytil– 15 Gauthier
29 Hunt – 17 Rooney – 75 Reaves

55 Lindgren – 23 Fox
79 Miller – 8 Trouba
12 Nemeth – 5 Tinordi

40 Georgiev
31 Shesterkin

53 Jeff Skinner -72 Tage Thompson -74 Rasmus Asplund
91 Drake Caggiula -24 Dylan Cozens -29 Vinnie Hinostroza
28 Zemgus Girgensons -20 Cody Eakin -21 Kyle Okposo
96 Anders Bjork -25 Arttu Ruotsalainen -15 John Hayden

26 Rasmus Dahlin -13 Mark Pysyk
78 Jacob Bryson -33 Colin Miller
4 Will Butcher -8 Robert Hagg

31 Dustin Tokarski
80 Aaron Dell

Starting Buffalo goalie Dustin Tokarski has an interesting history with the Rangers.  He was the Canadiens’ goalie who took over for the injured Carey Price in 2014 in the Eastern Conference Finals.  After 2014-15 he played only one game in the NHL, spending four years rattling around the AHL including a stint with the Wolf Pack.  He’s revitalized his career in Buffalo and is splitting duties with Aaron Dell.

How to watch and the live conversation

The game will start at 6pm and the telecast will be on the MSG 2 Network with the radiocast on WEPN 1050 AM.  Nationally, the game will be live streamed on ESPN+.

As usual Blue Line Station will be hosting its live in-game conversation using the comments feature below. We’ve had some issues with the comments refreshing and are working on that, so please bear with us. One workaround is to change how the comments sort from “newest” to “oldest” and back to “newest” again.

Join the conversation and share your thoughts with your fellow Ranger fans as we see if the Blueshirts can keep up their outstanding play.