Buffalo Sabres: Hockeyville USA comes to New York

The Buffalo Sabres will play the Columbus Blue Jackets in the fourth annual Kraft Hockeyville USA game being held tonight in Clinton, New York. Clinton beat out towns from South Dakota, Louisiana, and Vermont to host the event which included $150,000 to improve the Clinton Arena.

The Sabres have played in Kraft Hockeyville USA once before, beating the Carolina Hurricanes in 2016. Additionally, the Sabres have also played in Kraft Hockeyville in Canada in 2008 and 2010.

The fans coming out to the Clinton Arena for tonight’s game will have the opportunity to see as good of a roster you can see in a preseason game as both the Sabres and Blue Jackets will have most of their top guns in the lineup.

Highlighting the roster for the Sabres will be Rasmus Dahlin. The first overall pick in last year’s draft will be playing in his 3rd preseason game and his looking for his first point as a Sabre while averaging over 20 minutes a game thus far.

Most of the forwards expected to make the team will be in the lineup including Jack Eichel, Sam Reinhart, newly acquired Jeff Skinner, Casey Mittelstadt, and Kyle Okposo. Mittelstadt has had a rough start to training camp and is hoping to improve in the last 3 games prior to the start of the season next week.

Also in the lineup are two guys that are having a superb training camp: Evan Rodrigues and Alexander Nylander. Both Rodrigues and Nylander have 2 assists and Rodrigues has played in every game of the preseason.

Playing with Dahlin on defense tonight will be a slew of defenseman fighting for the final spots on the roster: Brendan Guhle, Lawrence Pilut, Jake McCabe, and Casey Nelson. Scott Wedgewood and Jonas Johansson will be the goaltenders tonight. Wedgewood still has a shot of making the roster out of camp and Johansson will start 2018-19 in Rochester.

The Columbus Blue Jackets will also be playing a lineup that includes players that will definitely make the team out of camp as head coach John Tortorella looks to tweak his lineup with a week of camp left. Top defensemen Seth Jones and David Savard (Zach Werenski had shoulder surgery in May and was just cleared for contact) will be playing as well as Artemi Panarin. Panarin continues to be the subject of trade rumors and his future in Columbus is still very much in the air.

After tonight’s game the Buffalo Sabres will have 2 preseason games remaining: tomorrow in Pittsburgh and Friday in Oshawa to face the New York Islanders (without John Tavares).