Canes at Sabres: Game Night Hub

After a disappointing loss on Thursday night in Brooklyn, the Hurricanes will have an opportunity to bounce back with a contest against a struggling Buffalo Sabres team that is coming in from playing a road game last night.

After his worst outing as a Hurricane so far, Scott Darling will get the nod in goal, likely to avoid having to expose him to the Islanders team that got to him so well on Thursday. Look for Cam Ward to take the net tomorrow.

Marcus Kruger has recovered from his illness and will hop back into the lineup, but Josh Jooris is nursing what seems to be a minor injury, so recent call-up Phil di Giuseppe will remain in the lineup once again. Pretty much everything else figures to be the same as it was in Brooklyn, and here’s how we expect the Hurricanes to look come puck drop:

Teuvo Teravainen - Jordan Staal - Sebastian Aho
Jeff Skinner - Victor Rask - Elias Lindholm
Brock McGinn - Derek Ryan - Justin Williams
Joakim Nordstrom - Marcus Kruger - Phil di Giuseppe

Jaccob Slavin - Brett Pesce
Haydn Fleury - Justin Faulk
Noah Hanifin - Trevor van Riemsdyk

Scott Darling
Cam Ward

On the Buffalo side of things, the 5-10-4 Sabres will be desperate to start a run to work themselves back into the playoff picture in the Eastern conference. They lost 3-1 in Detroit last night, and enter this game winless in their last four contests.

Evander Kane leads the group in both goals and points with 10 and 18 respectively, while Jack Eichel has also been productive with 16 points in 19 games. Former Hurricane Matt Tennyson is pointless in his 14 games so far, so look for that to change if he draws into the lineup tonight.

That being said, here is the lineup the Sabres went with in Detroit yesterday evening:

Benoit Pouliot - Ryan O’Reilly - Kyle Okposo
Evander Kane - Jack Eichel - Sam Reinhart
Seth Griffith - Johan Larsson - Jason Pominville
Zemgus Girgensons - Kyle Crisuolo - Jordan Nolan

Marco Scandella - Justin Falk
Jake McCabe - Nathan Beaulieu
Josh Gorges - Victor Antipin

Robin Lehner
Chad Johnson