Saturday, February 23, 2013

Pre Game: Isles @ Sabres

 photo courtesy of http://upload.wikimedia.org/

Tonight, our Islanders finish their brief road trip in Buffalo taking on Thomas Vanek and the new look Buffalo Sabres.  Earlier this week, Buffalo fired their long time coach Lindy Ruff and replaced him with Ron Rolston who is the older brother of former Islander Brian Rolston.

The goalie matchup tonight features Evgeni Nabokov for the Islanders and presumably Ryan Miller for the Sabres.  Earlier today, netminder Rick Dipietro cleared waivers and was assigned to Bridgeport.  Also this morning, Kevin Poulin landed in Buffalo so he will in fact be able to serve as Evgeni Nabokovs backup tonight.

The Islanders lineup will remain the same as it was in Thursdays 4-3 OT win over Montreal.  This means of course that David Ullstrom once again will be a healthy scratch.  One has to wonder what Ullstrom did to get in the dog house it seems like.

After last weeks game when the Islanders drastically out shot the Sabres plus the sending down of Dipietro today, I have a feeling the Islanders will come out flying.  Conversely, when a team changes coaches they usually have a surge right after it happens.  So it is safe to expect that Buffalo will probably match us in this department.  This should be an entertaining game.

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