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Sabres trending up, Penguins trending down

November 19, 2018, 1:00 PM ET [186 Comments]
Ryan Wilson
Pittsburgh Penguins Blogger • RSSArchiveCONTACT
The Pittsburgh Penguins head into tonight’s game against the Buffalo Sabres with a 1-7-1 record in their last nine games. Buffalo is headed in the other direction and going for their sixth consecutive victory tonight. Historically speaking the Penguins have owned the Buffalo Sabres in the salary cap era. Playing the Sabres would normally be great news for the team. The Sabres aren’t a pushover anymore.

Buffalo is still a 48.7% possession team so while their record is good they are still a middle of the road team. Even without Sidney Crosby this is a winnable game for the Penguins. This is of course assuming that the Penguins get an NHL caliber goaltending performance which has been a rarity lately.

Matt Murray will not be in net tonight. Casey DeSmith will be. DeSmith has an all-situations save percentage of .930 this year while Murray is at .877. The Sabres have been getting solid goaltending from Carter Hutton this year. He is at .919 putting in some great work against the Lightning and Jets this week. We know how things went against the Lightning with Murray.

One thing that will help the Penguins is that Sabres coach Phil Housley remains confused on which Rasmus is actually good. He thinks Ristolainen should play the big minutes, but it should obviously be Dahlin who was the generational talent taken number one overall this past spring.

When Rasmus Dahlin is on the ice the Sabres have 51.57 CF% and when he is off that drops to 48.0. When Ristolainen is on the ice the Sabres have a CF% of 47.16% and when he’s off that rises to 50.4%. Dahlin has a 5v5 points per 60 of 1.21 and Ristolainen who is supposedly an offensively minded player is at a lowly 0.34. Kris Letang who is having a great season is at 1.17 points per 60 to put Dahlin’s production in perspective. Dahlin should be a top pairing player not a third pairing player (where he's been recently), but the Penguins need every break they can get these days.

Conor Sheary makes his return to Pittsburgh. He has six goals and ten points on the year. He has a 1.76 points per 60 which is decent for the cap hit. The Penguins roster would look a hell of a lot better with him still in Pittsburgh and Jack Johnson in Montreal or anywhere that isn’t in the 412 area code.





Pittsburgh is in win now mode while the Sabres are still trying to build their team back up after their intentional tank to acquire Jack Eichel. Their franchise situations are different. That said, the Rochester Americans are on the rise and the WB/S Penguins aren’t quite as good as they used to be. One of Jason Botterill’s strengths is building up that pipeline from the AHL using quite a number of college players. Penguins fans don’t need a reminder of how important that pipeline was in the teams back to back Stanley Cup Championships.

It will be interesting to see if the Sabres pull some of their AHL talent up to help keep the team in a playoff spot. Players like Victor Olofsson are over a point per game in the AHL. Lawrence Pilut has 22 points in only 15 games as a defenseman. Olofsson is 23 years old and Pilut is 22 years old. Those are two good candidates to get a promotion at some point. Brendan Guhle is another young defenseman who has had a taste of NHL action. I would be looking at the Peter Chiarelli’s of the world to unload Rasmus Ristolainen and take a chance on somebody from Rochester to fill a vacant spot on the big club.

Jeff Skinner has been amazing for the Sabres this year. It was phenomenal trade for Buffalo. The Sabres will rightly have interest in retaining his services




So that's a bit high. He certainly deserves a raise, but I'm hesitant to start the conversation in that range. My reason is because Skinner is a 10.2% shooter for his career. He is currently shooting 21.2% which is more than double his career average. Tread carefully, Mr. Botterill.

Sabres killer Sidney Crosby will not be in the lineup tonight. He did skate with the team. He is feeling better. He’s just not ready to go tonight. It seems encouraging that his return will be in the next week.

Matt Cullen was missing from the morning skate and the report is that he is a lower body injury and will be out “longer term”. Injuries are not how I wanted Cullen to find himself out of the lineup. The reality is that it is addition by subtraction as far as the on-ice product is concerned.




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