On Tuesday morning, it was learned that Ryan O'Reilly would be lost for the next three weeks due to an emergency appendectomy.
On Tuesday night, Evander Kane stepped up and led his Sabres teammates to a much needed victory in Detroit.
Kane potted two goals, including the game winner, and was the game's first star.
To the Kane highlights we go:
Kane also dropped the gloves and TKO'd Red Wings D Brendan Smith.
Kane now has 8 goals in his last 11 games after starting the season without a goal in his first 12 games. Kane leads the Sabres with 8 goals in the month December.
Congrats to Sabres Coach Dan Bylsma on his 300th career @NHL win! pic.twitter.com/G1nRAQSCVz
— Buffalo Sabres (@BuffaloSabres) December 28, 2016
Samson Reinhart and Jack Eichel also scored for Buffalo in their needed win over Detroit.
Bruins have 40 points Sabres have 34 points Sabres-Bruins play head to head Thursday and Saturday #EichelTime
— SabresBuzz (@SabresBuzz) December 28, 2016
Oh, by the way, Sabres have 3 games in hand on Boston
— SabresBuzz (@SabresBuzz) December 28, 2016
Inquiring minds want to know:
Is Tim Murray going to trade Kane before the NHL trade deadline?
Several NHL teams have been scouting Kane in recent weeks since the power forward returned from his cracked rib injury that sidelined him for 11 games.
Among the teams keeping tabs on Kane have been LA, Calgary, Colorado, and Montreal.
Kane will earn $5.25 million this and and next season.
It was learned Tuesday that the Kings will be without Toffoli for a while.
Los Angeles Kings forward Tyler Toffoli was lost to a lower-body injury last week.
The injury forced Toffoli to miss games in Nashville and Dallas last week.
The last time he suited up and played was in Columbus on December 20.
The Kings will play games in Vancouver and Edmonton on Thursday and Friday.
Kings head coach Daryl Sutter said Tuesday morning that Toffoli it will be a while until Toffoli gets looked at.
“We’ll get him looked at again early after the new year, so it’ll be at least a week before we even look at him again….
Toffoli’s consecutive games played streak ended at 149 games when he missed the game in Nashville.
Toffoli's loss will be sorely missed as he has scored 8 goals (2 PPG) and 12 assists. He has been averaging 17:40 TOI.
Los Angeles has officially been credited with losing 115 man-games to injury this season:
Andy Andreoff (15), Dustin Brown (2), Marian Gaborik (21), Anze Kopitar (5), Brayden McNabb (25), Jonathan Quick (32), Jeff Zatkoff (11) and Toffoli (2).
The NHL roster freeze has been lifted and teams are now free to make trades to bolster their rosters heading into the NHL trade deadline.
The Kings currently have $8,347,757 with long term injury relief.
Kings scouts have been frequent flyers to Buffalo in recent weeks. I'm told Kings brass has been curiously keeping an eye on two Buffalo forwards: Evander Kane and Zemgus Girgensons. Kane is trending upward and has three goals in his past five games, and, eight points in his last 10 games. The ideal to trade a player is when he is performing at a high level. You sell a stock at it's highest value, right? Kane's value is rising on a game by game basis. Tim Murray isn't going to give Kane away. Murray wants a young left shot defender. The loss of Toffoli for an extended period of time will put a dent in LA top six forward ranks. Kane would add the three things that the Kings so desperately need more of from their forwards:
Scoring, speed and physicality.
Kane will get his nose dirty along the walls and will go to the hard areas around the next. It took Kane a half dozen games to get his bearings back after missing 11 games due cracked ribs that he suffered in a collision with the end wall boards on opening night against Montreal.
At what price Kane?
Tim Murray is still desperately seeking a left shot D who can play top four minutes and contribute on the PP. Jake Muzzin, 26, fits that bill to a tee. The 6'3" 220 lb. Woodstock, Ontario native has played a key leadership role in LA's success for the past six seasons.
Sabres D coach Terry Murray helped shape Muzzin into the defender he has become. Muzzin has three and a half seasons remaining on his current contract at $4M AAV.
Murray also has interest in Ontario Reign D-man Kurtis MacDermid, the 6'5" 210 lb. hitting machine. MacDermid starred on Erie Otters teams that featured Connor McDavid in 2014 and 2015. MacDermid is an undrafted lefty who plays a heavy, tough, stay at home game.
The Kings can ill afford a prolonged scoring outage from its top six forward group, 4-3-3 in their past 10 games, currently are tied with Calgary for eighth place in the West with 38 points.
Kings GM Dean Lombardi may want to make a trade to add scoring and speed to his lineup now rather than wait until the trade deadline. Waiting that long could force the Kings fall out of wild card contention.
Toffoli earns $3.25 million this season and will be RFA on July 1.
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Jack Eichel has six goals and four assists in 10 games this season.
Jack got a brand new, expensive camera for Christmas. It takes gorgeous shelfies.
Here, he posterized Sabres legend Thomas Vanek with a pretty edge dig then go hard to the net move. Petr Mrzaek needed Vanek to play Vanek's body, to no avail.
The Sabres have improved to 29-14-4 (.660) in Jack Eichel’s career when he records a point and 12-3-1 (.781) when he has at least two.
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With his assist in the win over Detroit, Rasmus Ristolainen has 16 points (3G, 13A) in his last 16 games, including 15 points (3G, 12A) in his last 12 games.
Ristolainen also now has six assists in his last four visits to Detroit.
Ristolainen's 24 points rank him #3 in NHL defenseman scoring behind Victor Hedman (29 points) and Erik Karlsson (32 points).
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Marcus Foligno had himself a nice assist and earned a TKO in a fight with Anthony Martha in the victory over Detroit.
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