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Raleigh, NC (WGR 550) -- The Sabres walk into Raleigh with two wins while the Hurricanes have suffered losses to Florida and Tampa Bay by a combined score of 9-2.
Carolina is just 1-for-11 on the power play and a horrible 66.7% on the penalty kill.
The Hurricanes acquired Jordan Staal from Pittsburgh in June and he has one assist and is -2. His brother Eric who is also the Hurricanes captain, is pointless. Carolina also picked up the immensely talented, but underachieving Alexander Semin. He got a $7-million deal with Carolina and has not netted a goal in the early going.
Former rookie of the year Jeff Skinner has a goal, but is already -4.
Lindy Ruff has done his scouting of the Canes and said, “I think there’s some burn in time with any team with new players. They’ve got Jordan here now, they’ve got Semin here now. It’s trying to find what fits, I think you can see he (Kirk Muller) tried some different line combinations which personally I think is the right thing to do. He tried to criticize himself for all the different line combinations, but sometimes you have to try. You have to find out and all of a sudden you’ll find something that works. No different than Ennis, Foligno and Stafford all of a sudden became a real good line for us, we tried several different combinations and it works.”
Thomas Vanek has played 26 games in his career against the Canes scoring 26 points. He knows what he’s getting into, “They always play us good. It’s a quick transition team, they’re fast paced, especially good on the power play so we’ve got to stay out of the box. That’s the key for us is to not give up as many shots as we did in Toronto although I felt a lot of them were on the outside, but still, it was too many shots so stay out of the box, play good defensively, take their good transition away and the thing for us is when we get our odd man rushes or five on five chance we’ve got to put them away. I think the other night it was 2-0 and we could’ve made in three of four to nothing and we didn’t, we let them hang around and it got close at the end.”
The Sabres come in with one hot line. Vanek has two goals and four assists for six points, Jason Pominville has a goal and four assists while Cody Hodgson has two goals.
Rookie Mikhail Grigorenko is the team’s only minus player at -1, while Hodgson is +4.
Ryan Miller gets the night off for Jhonas Enroth, Miller is 2-0-0 with a 1.50 goals against and .953 save percentage.
After the Toronto game I think I went a little overboard about how bad they are at faceoffs. They certainly were bad that game going 19-and-45. Hodgson was 5-and-17, Tyler Ennis was 2-and-12 and Jochen Hecht was 1-and-5. It was better vs Philadelphia. The team was 54% at 36-and-31. Hodgson was 11-and-9 while Ennis was 11-and-6. Hecht still wasn’t good at 2-and-7.
Join Schopp and the Bulldog for the pregame at 6:00 when they’ll be joined by Ruff, Vanek and Enroth.
Carolina is just 1-for-11 on the power play and a horrible 66.7% on the penalty kill.
The Hurricanes acquired Jordan Staal from Pittsburgh in June and he has one assist and is -2. His brother Eric who is also the Hurricanes captain, is pointless. Carolina also picked up the immensely talented, but underachieving Alexander Semin. He got a $7-million deal with Carolina and has not netted a goal in the early going.
Former rookie of the year Jeff Skinner has a goal, but is already -4.
Lindy Ruff has done his scouting of the Canes and said, “I think there’s some burn in time with any team with new players. They’ve got Jordan here now, they’ve got Semin here now. It’s trying to find what fits, I think you can see he (Kirk Muller) tried some different line combinations which personally I think is the right thing to do. He tried to criticize himself for all the different line combinations, but sometimes you have to try. You have to find out and all of a sudden you’ll find something that works. No different than Ennis, Foligno and Stafford all of a sudden became a real good line for us, we tried several different combinations and it works.”
Thomas Vanek has played 26 games in his career against the Canes scoring 26 points. He knows what he’s getting into, “They always play us good. It’s a quick transition team, they’re fast paced, especially good on the power play so we’ve got to stay out of the box. That’s the key for us is to not give up as many shots as we did in Toronto although I felt a lot of them were on the outside, but still, it was too many shots so stay out of the box, play good defensively, take their good transition away and the thing for us is when we get our odd man rushes or five on five chance we’ve got to put them away. I think the other night it was 2-0 and we could’ve made in three of four to nothing and we didn’t, we let them hang around and it got close at the end.”
The Sabres come in with one hot line. Vanek has two goals and four assists for six points, Jason Pominville has a goal and four assists while Cody Hodgson has two goals.
Rookie Mikhail Grigorenko is the team’s only minus player at -1, while Hodgson is +4.
Ryan Miller gets the night off for Jhonas Enroth, Miller is 2-0-0 with a 1.50 goals against and .953 save percentage.
After the Toronto game I think I went a little overboard about how bad they are at faceoffs. They certainly were bad that game going 19-and-45. Hodgson was 5-and-17, Tyler Ennis was 2-and-12 and Jochen Hecht was 1-and-5. It was better vs Philadelphia. The team was 54% at 36-and-31. Hodgson was 11-and-9 while Ennis was 11-and-6. Hecht still wasn’t good at 2-and-7.
Join Schopp and the Bulldog for the pregame at 6:00 when they’ll be joined by Ruff, Vanek and Enroth.