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I'm looking forward to a defensive struggle tonight between two teams that are struggling to score goals of late.
With the NHL trade deadline looming five weeks off on the horizon, several NHL clubs have dispatched their heavy hitters to Buffalo for the Sabres and Red Wings game.
For example, he Montreal Canadiens, Chicago Blackhawks and Arizona Coyotes have sent their respective Directors of Pro Scouting to Buffalo.
The Habs have to find goal scorers to help inject offense into their anemic offense.
The Blackhawks can never have enough veteran depth D-men, especially in the playoffs.
The Coyotes are looking to add D depth and a top six forward.
The St. Louis Blues will be represented by their director of player personnel.
The Blues have scouted the Sabres extensively for months much the same way they had before the Ryan Miller-Steve Ott trade was executed in February 2013. The Blues are looking to add a proven goal scorer and a 5-6 blue liner.
The Dallas Stars have sent their head scout to watch Buffalo-Detroit.
Lindy Ruff needs to add a third pair D-man.
Mike Weber, he of the expiring contract is the object of desire of several teams. He is at his best when he is slotted properly at 5-6 role with 14-15 minutes TOI per game. He fights, hits, clears the crease, and is miserable on opponents in the corners. Lindy and Hitch love big, mean D-men like Weber.
Carlo Colaiocovo, he of the dented trachea, has played well in his limited use in Buffalo. I can see him moving at the deadline. He is a pending UFA. He has played for STL in his career.
David Legwand is the grimy, crusty veteran that NHL GMs can't get enough of, especially ones with veteran teams who need an extra leader for the postseason. Legwand can be had for cheap and is on an expiring contract.
Chad Johnson is also a pending UFA and is garnering a lot of attention among GMs and directors of personnel.
Jamie McGinn is Buffalo most coveted pending UFA. He's only 27 and he's already got 10 goals. I know of several NHL teams who like McGinn a lot. Who wouldn't? He's healthy, productive and malleable.. He can play one lines 1-4, kills penalties and PP, blocks shots and fore checks like a German Sheppard on a frisbee.
Problem being, McGinn isn't going anywhere. I see Tim Murray locking up McGinn to a multi-year contract extension.
Is Matt Moulson in play? Tyler Ennis?
***
There was a time not that long ago that Detroit Red Wings rookie Dylan Larkin held a sizable lead of fellow American rookie phenom Jack Eichel in the NHL Rookie scoring race.
Eichel and Larkin were teammates on the U.S. National Team Development Program in Ann Arbor, Michigan as 16-year-year-olds three years ago. They roomed together at the World Championship spring in Prague where Team USA won the bronze medal.
Now they're competing head to head in the NHL in the same division.
"Two rookies that came from similar paths, at the NTDP together, went to college, went to the World Championships together, good friends," Eichel told MLive.com recently.
"It's a cool thing". Larkin said.
Friday night, Eichel and Larkin will meet head to head for the third time this season. When the opening face-off drops, both players will be deadlocked in total points scored.
Eichel enters Friday night's game with 16 points (5G, 11A) in his last 15 games. It's been a torrid stretch which included a career-best, four-game point streak (2G, 4A) from December 30 to January 5. It's the best 15-game stretch by a Sabres rookie since Derek Plante logged 17 points in 15 games during the 1993-94 season.
Chicago's Russian rookie Artemi Panarin leads all NHL freshman with 45 points. Arizona's Max Domi is second with 31 points.
In 45 games played, Larkin has scored 14 goal sand added 16 assists for 30 points total.
In 47 games played, Eichel has scored 14 goals and has chipped in 16 helpers of his own.
What is so impressive about the two snipers is that they are very similar yet very different in their approach to the game. Both players skate like the wins and are not afraid to go to the dirty areas to hunt loose pucks and re-direct shots on goal.
Eichel has scored 5 PPGs to Larkin's 1 PPG.
Larkin has scored 4 game winning goals to Eichel's 2 GWGs.
Larkin has taken 122 shots on goal to Eichel's 144.
Larkin averages 16:53 TOI while Eichel is averaging 18:45 TOI.
Larkin is a 42.8% faceoff man. Eichel is a 41.4% draw man.
Eichel is so hyper-competitive that he doesn't want to ever finish second to anyone, friends included.
Eichel and Larkin have already shown us that they can raise their game to higher levels when they compete head to head against one another. Eichel has two goals in two games against Detroit this season.
It will be fun to watch these two friends battle inside the division for the next 10+ seasons.
**
Eichel's partner in crime, fellow rookie Samson Reinhart, enters Friday night's game in sixth place in NHL Rookie scoring with 12 goals (4 PPG) and 8 assists.
If they maintain their current pace, Eichel (14G, 16A) and Sam Reinhart (12G, 9A) would be the first pair of Sabres rookies to surpass the 30-point mark since Thomas Vanek (48) and Jason Pominville (30) did so in 2005-06.
â—¾Eichel (14) and Reinhart (12) are also on pace to become the second pair of rookies in Sabres history to each record 20 goals in the same season. The first pair was Danny Gare (31) and Peter McNab (22) in 1974-75.
â—¾With 30 points (14G, 1A6) in 47 games, Eichel is on pace for 52 points this season. If he reaches the 50-point mark, he will become the ninth Sabres rookie to record more than 50 points in a season. He would be the first since Derek Plante (1993-94) and the second-youngest to do so, trailing only Phil Housley (1982-83).
Reinhart was shaken up in the late stages of the second period of Buffalo's 2-1 loss at Colorado on Wednesday night. He didn't finish the game due to an upper body ailment. The Sabres didn't practice on Thursday. More will be known about Reinhart's status for Friday night's game vs. Detroit.
***
Stop me of you've heard this one before:
A defensive juggernaut NHL team is struggling to score it's own goals.
The Detroit Red Wings have scored just two lousy two goals in last two games. The Wings do such a great job of strangling opponents' scoring chances that they negate their own goal scoring in the process.
On Wednesday night, the Wings lost 2-1 to the St. Louis Blues.
Wings head coach Jeff Blashill sliced and diced his forward lines at Thursday's practice to find some more offense.
Dylan Larkin skated with Henrik Zetterberg and Justin Abdelkader.
The Wings will be without veteran scorer Brad Richards, who will miss the game to attend his grandfather's funeral.
The Wings' second line will feature Pavel Datsyuk with Darren Helm and Gustav Nyquist.
Riley Sheahan centered Tomas Tatar and Tomas Jurco.
Luke Glendening centered Joakim Andersson and Teemu Pulkkinen.
Blashill told the Detroit Free Press that he doesn't want to sacrifice team defense to create more offense. There is a precarious balance.
"There is chemistry involved in success with lines," he said. "But when you're not scoring, sometimes you've got to keep looking for answers. For me, it has to make sense. It can't just be a jumbled mess to try. I think the other thing is, when you construct a line, it's easy to think, well, we're just going to put these three skilled players together and they'll be great. As we see every night, you have to go to the net and you have to net-presence, so you have to have somebody on the line that excels at that.
"You have to have a good mix of speed and skill. If you have a real skilled line that's not fast enough, in today's NHL they get tracked down from behind. So there's lots that go into the combinations."
**
Tomas Tatar had the flu on Wednesday and missed the Blues game. He practiced Thursday and is expected to play at Buffalo.
**
This is the fourth of five meetings between the Sabres and Red Wings this season.
â—¾Last meeting: Detroit defeated Buffalo, 4-3, in Buffalo on January 2
â—¾Next meeting: Monday, March 28 in Detroit
â—¾The Sabres are 2-7-1 in their last 10 games vs. the Red Wings; 2-7-1 at home.
â—¾This is the 128th game all-time between Buffalo and Detroit; Buffalo has a 55-55-17 series record.
â—¾The Sabres are 35-18-9 at home against the Red Wings all-time.
â—¾A win Friday night would give the Sabres two wins in a season against the Red Wings for the first time since they won both matchups in the 1989-90 season.
â—¾Rasmus Ristolainen has five assists in three games against the Red Wings this season.
â—¾Brian Gionta has five points (3+2) in five career home games against the Red Wings.
Jamie McGinn is in a nice place right now.
Literally and figuratively.
The 27 year old Fergus, Ontario native loves the way that he has been embraced by the exuberant hockey fanatics of Buffalo and Western New York.
Sabres fans love gritty, scar-faced, physical players. McGinn joins a long list of lunch bucket heroes who have plied their blue collar trades in Buffalo. Steve Ott, Michael Peca, Adam Mair, Mike Foligno, Mike Grier, Cody McCormick, Patrick Kaleta, Kevin McGuire to name a few.
McGinn has 10 goals this season and he has been a steady, calming force on the ice and in the room.
With the February 29 trade deadline looming, Sabres GM Tim Murray has a decision to make on McGinn.
Should he stay or should he go out the door at the deadline?
I see a four year contract extension in McGinn's future. Others see him as a trade deadline rental.
The Buffalo News spoke with McGinn's agent Thane Campbell about his client's future in Buffalo. Campbell said there have been no contract extension talks yet with Sabres GM Tim Murray.
Yet.
Campbell knows it's part of the process. McGinn loves Buffalo.
“He loves Buffalo,… Campbell said.
“He loves the city. He really likes the teammates. He really feels comfortable there. He feels the coaches have respect for his game, and he feels that it’s a good fit for him.…
I've spoken with McGinn several times about his Buffalo experience. He loves Western New York's grit and tenacity. He also loves that Buffalo is as passionate for hockey as Canadian markets are. He loves the proximity to Toronto so that he can take helicopter flights to and from Blue Jays games with Evander Kane.
If ever a Sabres player had intrinsic value to his team beyond his measurables on ice it's McGinn.
He hits, blocks shots, flushes the walls, back checks, fore checks, and puts physical fear in the hearts and minds of opponents. McGinn has intangibles that make him very valuable to the Sabres.
Tim Murray knew what he was doing when he demanded that McGinn be included in the Ryan O'Reilly blockbuster trade in June 2015.
McGinn was not a "throw in" player.
He was asked for by Murray who scouted McGinn extensively when he played juniors with the Ottawa 67s when Murray was AGM of the Ottawa Senators.
Don't be mistaken or misled.
Murray values McGinn the same way that his best friend Ryan O'Reilly does.
O'Reilly plays a huge role in McGinn's future in Buffalo. McGinn and O'Reilly are close friends. I call them "The Irish Mafia". They hangout during summers and they are very close during the season. Their friendship was born in Denver years ago and its stronger today in Buffalo.
Tim Murray is not a fool. He isn't going to trade away his future captain's best friend. That would be as damning a move as Murray trading Irish Mafia member Cal O'Reilly.
You can best believe that Marie's phone is blowing up right now from the inbound phone calls from his NHL GM counterparts who wish rent McGinn for the remainder of this season in exchange for a draft choice
Unlike Matt Moulson, McGinn will have many suitors on July 1st where he to become an unrestricted free agent. You will recall that Marie traded Moulson, a pending unrestricted free agent at the time, to Minnesota at the 2014 NHL trade deadline. When Minnesota was eliminated in the first round bye the Chicago Blackhawks, there GM Chuck Fletcher opted not to offer Matt Molson a long term contract extension to stay with the Wild.
You will recall that Tim Murray had to spend multiple millions of dollars to get his team to the 2015 NHL salary cap floor. That's when Murray signed Moulson to the ginormous 5 year, $25 million contract.
McGinn would be a hotter commodity than Moulson was on the UFA market. I do not think that Tim Murray would want to risk creating bad will and anxiety inside his harmonious locker room right now by trading away a respected team leader in McGinn.
Sure, Murray could trade McGinn for a second round pick in the Buffalo-hosted 2016 NHL Draft, however, it would not be worth it in the long run it would not be worth it in the long run to cause consternation among your team if McGinn could not be re-signed as an uestricted free agent on July 1st because he signed with another team for more money or a bigger role.
It's not worth the headaches to trade McGinn.
That's why he will get paid handsomely to stay and play in Buffalo.