BUFFALO, N.Y. – Buffalo Sabres coach Lindy Ruff anticipates the start of the season without his starting goaltender, Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen, who suffered a lower-body injury during his preseason debut.<\/p>\n
Ruff indicated that Luukkonen will be out week-to-week, without revealing the exact nature of the injury on Friday. The coach only mentioned that the injury is different from the lower-body issue that kept the 26-year-old out at the start of training camp two weeks ago.<\/p>\n
The most recent injury occurred on Wednesday, when Luukkonen was unable to return after the first period in the 5-3 loss to the Pittsburgh Penguins.<\/p>\n
Buffalo concludes its preseason schedule in Pittsburgh on Friday and begins the season by hosting the New York Rangers on Thursday.<\/p>\n
The absence of Luukkonen will force the Sabres to turn to two free agent additions from the offseason: Alex Lyon, who was projected as a backup, and Alexandar Georgiev. Buffalo signed Georgiev last month as a precaution after Luukkonen suffered his initial injury in the weeks leading up to training camp.<\/p>\n
The Sabres are also expected to be without defenseman Michael Kesselring, who was also listed as week-to-week after aggravating an undisclosed injury on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The Buffalo blue line is already affected, with Owen Power (undisclosed) and Mattias Samuelsson (upper body) missing practice this week. Ruff expects both to be available for the opening game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Buffalo Sabres Begin Season with Injury Concerns BUFFALO, N.Y. – Buffalo Sabres coach Lindy Ruff anticipates the start of the season without his starting goaltender, Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen, who suffered a lower-body injury during his preseason debut. Ruff indicated that Luukkonen will be out week-to-week, without revealing the exact nature of the injury on Friday. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":44811,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[1107,290,454,8879],"class_list":{"0":"post-44810","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-buffalo-sabres","9":"tag-injury","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-ukko-pekka-luukkonen"},"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44810"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44810\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}