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Give It To Me Baby: Blackhawks vs. Sabres Preview

Back at the UC on Saturday night following Thursday’s win in the home opener.

Credit: Jamie Sabau-USA TODAY Sports

Coming off a decisive win in their home opener, the Blackhawks are back at the United Center Saturday to take on another bottom-10 team, the Buffalo Sabres.

The Sabres will be wrapping up a three-game road trip — on which they are 0-1-1 so far — with this stop in Chicago. Both games they’ve lost so far on the road trip have been competitive and close: a 6-5 loss in overtime on Wednesday to the Pittsburgh Penguins and then they fell 6-4 to the Columbus Blue Jackets the following night. Including their other four games of the short season so far, the Sabres are 1-4-1, with their only win being a 5-2 victory last Saturday against the Florida Panthers.

Despite the losses so far, Buffalo has solid top-nine that is doing all they can offensively to get wins. They have two players performing at a point-per-game pace: Alex Tuch, who currently leads Buffalo with six points (2 G, 4 A) in six games, and JJ Peterka, who had three goals and one assist in four games (he missed two games in concussion protocol). The other top forwards are Tage Thompson (3 G, 1 A), Jordan Greenway (2 G, 2 A), Jason Zucker (4 A), and Ryan McLeod (2 G, 1 A), all of which are riding three-game point streaks. They also have some former first-rounders in Dylan Cozens (No. 7, 2019), Peyton Krebs (No. 17, 2019), Jack Quinn (No. 8, 2020), and Jiri Kulich (No. 29, 2022) who could break out at any moment.

On defense, the young top-four has contributed well from the back end. Henri Jokiharju, is also on a three-game point streak and Bowen Byram has three points (all assists), while Owen Power has two goals and Rasmus Dahlin has two assists.

This group has also put up solid to great shot metric numbers, albeit in an obviously small sample. So why has Buffalo started so poorly? The main reason is goaltending, where they have the sixth worst save percentage (.893) so far in the young season. Their penchant for taking untimely penalties with goalies unable to stop the puck on the penalty kill (just 71.4 percent on PK, also sixth worst) has also been deadly so far.

Buffalo’s expected lines for this game are basically the same as they were against the Blue Jackets. Quinn, who was a healthy scratch in Columbus, was skating back on the second line but Zack Benson, who was replaced in the the last game, was participating with the second power play unit at morning skate.

Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen looks to be the starter for the Sabres. He had a .874 save percentage and 3.69 goals-against average in three games so far.

The Blackhawks are coming off their most cohesive game in literally years on Thursday night, when they beat the San Jose Sharks 4-2. Four Chicago players scored — Taylor Hall, Tyler Bertuzzi, Nick Foligno, and Jason Dickinson — while Connor Bedard and Teuvo Teravainen each added two assists. Yes, it was the Sharks, one of the worse teams in the last several years, but beating other bottom-dwellers wasn’t something the Blackhawks did consistently last season, so it was great to see them pull off the victory and do so in such a definitive way.

As a result of the win, the Blackhawks will roll similar lines from the Sharks game on Saturday night against the Sabres but with a few small changes: Arvid Soderblom will replace Petr Mrazek in net, and both Andreas Athanasiou and Ryan Donato draw back into the lineup in place of Pat Maroon and Joey Anderson, respectively.

Maroon isn’t playing against Buffalo because he blocked a shot off his foot in the Sharks game in the second period and ,while he returned for the third, the Blackhawks have decided to let him rest a little longer. Anderson is out with an illness.

Also of note: the Blackhawks signed forward prospect Landon Slaggert to a two-year contract extension worth $900,000 annually on Friday. Slaggert originally signed an entry-level contract with Chicago in March of this year that was set to expire in 2025, so this new signing keeps Slaggert with the organization until 2027.

Slaggert, 22, is a former third-round pick from the 2020 draft who spent four years playing for Notre Dame. He led his team in goals (20) and points (31) in 36 games during his senior season and had four points (1 G, 3 A) in 16 games last season with the Blackhawks. Slaggert is currently playing on the top line with the Rockford IceHogs, where he has one assist in two games so far.

Tale of the Tape

Blackhawks β€” Statistic β€” Sabres
43.71% (32nd) β€” 5-on-5 Corsi For β€” 50.66% (16th)
42.37% (31st) β€” 5-on-5 Expected goals for β€” 48.41% (24th)
2.17 (32nd) β€” Goals per game β€” 2.98 (23rd)
3.52 (29th) β€” Goals against per game β€” 2.96 (11th)
46.3% (29th) β€” Faceoffs β€” 45.0% (32nd)
16.60% (28th) β€” Power play β€” 16.6% (29th)
75.76% (27th) β€” Penalty kill β€” 79.8% (13th)
(All stats from last season)

How to Watch

When: 7 p.m. CT
Where: United Center, Chicago
TV: CHSN (How to Watch) And if this stuff isn’t sorted out by November we may start posting a lengthy list of places to pirate streams of the game for free. Only, like, sorta kidding.
Webstream: ESPN+
Radio: WGN 720

Talking Points