The Buffalo Sabres held a brief morning skate on Friday before heading to Pittsburgh for the preseason finale against the Penguins at PPG Paints Arena. The Sabres will be playing most of their starting forward compliment, but will be sitting team captain Rasmus Dahlin, Owen Power, and 2025 first rounder Radim Mrtka.
Sabres head coach Lindy Ruff provided an update on the status of goalie Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen, who left the 5-3 loss on Wednesday after the first period as a precautionary measure. The 26-year-old tweaked a lower-body injury ramping up for training camp in late August / early September, but the injury that caused him to be pulled eaely was not a recurrence of that.
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"(It's) a different injury than he'd been dealing with. It's going to be more than day-to-day, (we) don't really have a time frame on it, but more day to day……We'll see where he's at in a week, for sure." Ruff said. ”Seeing the doctors, he's dealing with something different now"
Based on the timeline, it appears that Luukkonen is a longshot to be cleared in time to play the season opener against the NY Rangers next Thursday, which means that the Sabres will enter the 2025-26 campaign with Alex Lyon as their starter and Alexandar Georgiev as the backup.
Ruff also indicated that defenseman Michael Kesselring, who left Wednesday’s game in the second period, is similarly out more than day-to-day and closer to week-to-week. Dahlin and Power are ready to go for next Thursday, and Bowen Byram is back in the lineup on Friday, but with Kesselring and Mattias Samuelsson likely not available for the opener, it will mean that Ryan Johnson will be in the lineup for the opener, and opens the possibility of either Jacob Bryson or Mrtka playing against the Rangers.
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