PREVIEW: Blue Jackets take on Sabres to finish road stretch

BLUE JACKETS (14-13-1) at SABRES (10-15-5)

It's the kind of tough stretch that can happen in a season, but that doesn't make it any more fun to go through. The hope is that things can turn around quickly, and Nyquist saw the team do some good things against the Oilers, bouncing back from giving up a pair of power-play goals in the first 10 minutes to make it a game near the end.
"I thought we played a lot of good minutes, but things aren't really going our way lately," he said. "We have to find ourselves here. We've had a lot of road games, but we have to find our game here again. We just have to find our game a little bit here and string together some wins again."
The team's leadership core like Nyquist and other veterans will have to help make that happen, and their message to this point has been what one would expect -- don't panic and just focus on improvement.
"This is part of it," Nyquist said. "This is part of the season, part of the league. Everything is easy when you win and things are going your way, and when it doesn't, you have to dig deep and work your way out of it."
Head coach Brad Larsen agreed that he liked his team's effort against the Oilers, even if the execution at times left some things to be desired. The Blue Jackets will get another crack at fixing what ails them tonight against the Sabres, but the team will go shorthanded into the contest.
Three Blue Jackets players -- captain Boone Jenner, fellow forward Jack Roslovic and defenseman Gabirel Carlsson -- were placed in the National Hockey League's COVID-19 protocol Sunday, and the team canceled practice out of an abundance of caution.
It's an issue confronting the entire league at the moment -- the Jackets' scheduled game Saturday at Calgary was postponed because of the number of cases on the Flames roster -- and the Blue Jackets are no different. The plan is to practice Monday in Columbus, then fly to Buffalo for the game, and Larsen said recently all the Jackets can do is handle whatever is thrown at them.
"We have talked about it as a group, just controlling what we can control, wearing our masks, making sure that we're sharp social distancing, doing all those things," Larsen said. "This is the landscape we're a part of right now, and you hope that it doesn't get too serious as far as sickness. … It's scary and it's not something you want to see, but we have to manage it the best we can."

Know the Foe

First, we'll start here -- in a league that has been besieged by players entering COVID-19 protocols, the Sabres as of this writing have just one player (goalie Dustin Tokarski) so impacted, a good sign as the teams prepare to play a back-to-back today and Thursday.
Buffalo enters the game on a four-game point streak (2-0-2), a welcome stretch that has come on the heels of a 3-14-2 run that followed a 5-1-1 start. The Sabres are coming off earning five of a possible six points during a three-game road trip, beating Winnipeg and Minnesota before an overtime loss in Pittsburgh on Friday night.
The Sabres were outscored 80-48 (an average of 4.21-2.53) during that rough 19-game stretch -- which included a 7-4 loss at home Nov. 22 to the Blue Jackets -- but have a 9-7 scoring edge in the last three games. In all, Buffalo is 23rd in the NHL in scoring (2.67 goals per game) and 28th in team defense (3.43 goals) while placing 18th in power play (18.6 percent) and 15th in penalty kill (80.0 percent).
In other words, the rebuild is still on and an 11th straight season without playoff hockey beckons, especially after the early-season trade of franchise forward Jack Eichel, who went to Vegas after an offseason standoff with the team over treatment of a neck injury. Some good news is on the horizon Monday, though, as forward Alex Tuch -- who had a 61-78-139 line in 255 games in Vegas and came over in the Eichel deal -- is expected to make his Sabres debut after coming back from shoulder surgery.
The Sabres don't have any standout scorers but do have depth, with 10 players in double digits in points. Kyle Okposo leads the way with a 6-14-20 line, while Tage Thompson was shaken up in a recent game but is the leading goal scorer with 10 among his 18 points. 2018 first overall pick Rasmus Dahlin is the top scorer on the blue line, posting six goals and 12 assists for 18 points.
Other names to know include veteran Jeff Skinner, who has bounced back to post a 9-8-17 line thus far; Victor Olofsson, the Swedish sniper who has five goals and 12 assists; and rookie Dylan Cozens, who has posted an 8-7-15 line in 30 games.
In net, with Tokarski and Craig Anderson (upper body) out, the Sabres are going with the duo of journeyman Malcolm Subban and top prospect Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen. The latter has played in five games and looked promising, posting a 2-2-1 record, 1.96 goals-against average and .939 save percentage, while Subban has given up nine goals in two starts with a .877 save percentage.