One of the surprises when the Buffalo Sabres announced their roster on Monday night was not necessarily the fact that they had five players on injured reserve but that Mattias Samuelsson was not one of the players. He has been dealing with an injury for a while now, as he last played in a preseason game on September 23rd and hasn't practiced since September 26th.
On Monday, he returned to practice in a non-contact jersey but it wasn't clear if he would be ready on Thursday for the game against the New York Rangers. However, with only six defensemen on the roster the Sabres seem to be confident that he will be on the ice.
They are going to need him because Michael Kesselring and Owen Power were placed on injured reserve as part of the roster moves made by Buffalo. Assuming there are no changes and the six defensemen the Sabres currently have are the ones that play, they have some options on the pairs for their defense.
Buffalo Sabres scramble their defensive pairs at practice
According to Rachel Lenzi with The Buffalo News, the Sabres went with some unique pairings at practice as Connor Timmins was paired with Rasmus Dahlin, Bowen Byram with Mattias Samuelsson and a rotation that included Ryan Johnson and Jacob Bryson on the third pair.
These are surprising to say the least because the Sabres really haven't used these at any point this season, or even last season with Bo Byram and Samuelsson playing only 65 minutes together.
Buffalo Sabres are making it more complicated than it needs to be
While the Sabres are missing two key parts of their defense, it actually works out in a way that they don't have to change that much. Owen Power and Michael Kesselring were expected to be a pair and played together in the preseason.
The other pairs was Bo Byram and Rasmus Dahlin with Samuelsson, when he was healthy, playing with Timmins. These pairs make a lot of sense and are what the Sabres should be using, and there is no reason they can't open the season with them.
The only change the Sabres have to make is to move Samuelsson and Timmins up as their second pair and have the third pair be Ryan Johnson and Jacob Bryson. By going with the pairs they did in practice on Monday means that once Power and Kesselring are back, the Sabres are going to have to shuffle their pairs again and essentially be back starting over.
The Sabres have a few more practices before they take the ice and it will be interesting to see what pairs they use over the next few days leading up to Thursday.