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Go Back Jack, Do It Again |
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Jack Eichel will lead his Buffalo Sabres into a hostile barn in Columbus tonight.
The Sabres beat the Florida Panthers 4-2 in Buffalo on Monday night.
Buffalo have won four of their past five games.
The Sabres are sending Anders Nilsson to their crease.
The forward lines will be scrambled to accommodate a scratch.
Kyle Okposo is doubtful for the game due to an illness. Nic Deslauriers will take his place in the lineup, which means that Evander Kane will bump back up to the top trio and skate with Ryan O'Reilly and Tyler Ennis.
There was no game day skate on Tuesday, however, the trios should look like this:
Kane-ROR-Ennis
Foligno-Eichel-Reinhart
carrier-Rodrigues-Gionta
Deslauriers-Girgensons-Moulson
Duos:
McCabe-Kulikov
Austin-Bogosian
Gorges-Falk
The Sabres are 45-for-52 (86.5%) on the penalty kill in their last 19 games.
Evander Kane has nine points (5G, 4A) in his last seven games against the Blue Jackets.
Jack Eichel has at least a point in four of his five career games against Columbus, having totaled six points (2G, 4A) in those games.
Jack Eichel has totaled 11 points (4G, 7A) in his last 10 road games.
In the time since his November 29 return from his high ankle sprain injury that sidelined him for 21 games, Eichel ranks sixth among all NHL skaters with 55 points (23G, 32A) and leads the NHL with 222 shots on goal.
Eichel has piled iup 40 points (15G, 25A) in his last 34 games, including 12 multi-point games during that stretch. The Sabres are 14-2-0 this season (and 22-5-1 in his career) when he has at least two points.
Eichel’s 1.00 point per game ranks him ninth in the NHL among all players with at least 20 games played this season.
If Eichel finishes the season at a point-per-game pace or better, he will become the eighth player in Sabres franchise history to do so in one of his first two full NHL seasons, joining Rick Martin (1971-72), Rene Robert (1972-73), Dave Andreychuk (1983-84), Phil Housley (1983-84), Pierre Turgeon (1988-89), Alexander Mogilny (1990-91) and Thomas Vanek (2006-07).
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