Preview: Rivalry Renewed

The Buffalo Sabres are bad. Last in the East bad. Same number of wins as Arizona bad. Teammates fighting teammates bad (hi, former Jacket Justin Falk). Losers of 4 in a row bad. Then there’s this.

That being said, watch them win this one 3-1. After all, they did nearly erase a 3-0 deficit in the third period the last time these two teams met.

On the Columbus side, your boys in blue have won two in a row and three of the last four since their end-of-year skid. There are just two games left before the bye week and they’re both against bottom-of-the-league teams. It’s critical to capitalize on this opportunity and bank some points so they lose no ground in the standings next week. New Jersey, for example, is just one point behind but has played 3 fewer games.

To help the cause, Alexander Wennberg was activated from IR yesterday, just 3 weeks after being out for “4-6 weeks.” The projected lineup is based on the line rushes from practice yesterday (per Brian Hedger), but Wennberg participated too so don’t be surprised if he enters the lineup somewhere. Sonny Milano is likely out after taking a hard hit on Monday. In his absence the Jackets could use another skilled forward like Wennberg.

Brandon Dubinsky was another practice participant but has not been activated yet.

In case you missed it, the All Star teams were announced yesterday, including our own Seth Jones

Projected Lineups

Artemi Panarin	Pierre-Luc Dubois	Josh Anderson
Jordan Schroeder	Boone Jenner	Nick Foligno
Matt Calvert	Lukas Sedlak	Oliver BJORKSTRAND
Tyler Motte	Zac Dalpe	Markus Hannikainen

Zach Werenski	Seth Jones
Markus Nutivaara	David Savard
Scott Harrington	Jack Johnson

Sergei Bobrovsky

Joonas Korpisalo

Benoit Pouliot	Jack Eichel	Kyle Okposo
Evander Kane	Ryan O'Reilly	Jason Pominville
Zemgus Girgensons	Evan Rodrigues	Sam Reinhart
Scott Wilson	Johan Larsson	Jordan Nolan

Nathan Beaulieu	Rasmus Ristolainen
Brendan Guhle	Jake McCabe
Josh Gorges	Justin Falk

Robin Lehner

Chad Johnson