Last night Andy Greene(!) scored on a penalty shot in overtime to give the New Jersey Devils their second road win in as many tries.
Tonight they're back at home looking to sweep their second home-and-home series in a row.
One would think they stand a good chance of doing just that. The Devils are an impressive 5-0-1 on home soil this season and they're dressing a better roster than they did a night ago with Cory Schneider, one of the NHL's few truly elite goaltenders, taking back the reigns in net.
Robin Lehner will be between the pipes for the Buffalo Sabres but I'm pretty confident suggesting the talent gap between those two is much more favorable to the Devils than a Keith Kinkaid vs Anders Nilsson matchup.
With another win tonight the Devils would move to five games over (NHL) .500, which is pretty remarkable given several key players have yet to get going. This just shows how good of a job Ray Shero has done assembling this team.
Here is a look at the lineup the Devils are expected to go with:
Taylor Hall - Travis Zajac - P.A. Parenteau Pavel Zacha - Adam Henrique - Kyle Palmieri Beau Bennett - Jacob Josefson - Devante Smith-Pelly Sergey Kalinin - Vern Fiddler - Nick Lappin
Andy Greene - Damon Severson Yohann Auvitu - Ben Lovejoy John Moore - Kyle Quincey
Cory Schneider
And the expected lines for the Sabres:
Evander Kane - Ryan O'Reilly - Kyle Okposo Marcus Foligno - Johan Larsson - Brian Gionta Will Carrier - Zemgus Girgensons - Matt Moulson Cole Schneider - Derek Grant - Nick Baptiste
Josh Gorges - Rasmus Ristolainen Dmitry Kulikov - Casey Nelson Jake McCabe - Cody Franson
Robin Lehner
A few notes:
1) I'm going to predict tonight is the night for the Henrique-Palmieri duo to breakout and get on the scoresheet. Why? Both players are shooting well under half their career averages. They are long overdue.
2) Neither team generates a whole lot of offense at 5 v 5 and both play pretty low event games. With both teams in the latter half of a back-to-back and their two starters between the pipes it's probably safe to expect another low scoring contest.
3) Hall quietly hasn't is on a seven-game goal drought despite firing 32 pucks on net in that span. If he keeps shooting at that rate they're going to start going in sooner than later. Could tonight be the night?
Tonight's game is scheduled for 7:00 pm eastern and can be seen on MSG+ and MSG-Buffalo.