Columbus Blue Jackets at Buffalo Sabres
Friday, October 2, 2015 – 7:00 PM EDT
First Niagara Center – Buffalo, New York
Radio: WBNS 1460 AM
Opponent’s Blog – Die By The Blade
So, this one has a strange feel for the Jackets, and should probably be taken with basically no real weight going into the season. The CBJ, faced with a back-to-back, raided their AHL roster to set up for this one. Buffalo is closing out their exhibition schedule, and played last night in similar circumstances (they iced a LOT of youngsters), and thus will probably be icing their expected starters tonight. So, plenty of grains of salt on the CBJ end, at least.
That said, there’s some chances for young players to impress, and for them to get one more lick of NHL-style game experience before kicking off the AHL schedule. And, if the kids and grizzled vets can steal this one, it’s a good sign of things to come both this season in the AHL and in the future in the NHL.
We don’t have much information on Buffalo’s lineup at this point, but here are the lines and pairs for the CBJ:
| Matt Calvert | Ryan Craig | Kerby Rychel |
| Sonny Milano | William Karlsson | Oliver Bjorkstrand |
| Markus Hannikainen | Michael Chaput | Jared Boll |
| Lukas Sedlak | T.J. Tynan | Alex Broadhurst |
| Andrew Bodnarchuk | Kevin Connauton |
| Justin Falk | Cody Goloubef |
| Dean Kukan | Dalton Prout |
| Curtis McElhinney |
| Brad Thiessen |
Enjoy this one for what it is, and get ready for tomorrow’s exhibition finale with “99.9%” of the starting lineup!