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The Nashville Predators open a crucial stretch of home games tonight against the Buffalo Sabres (7:00 p.m., no local TV). The joint should be jumping tonight, and Bridgestone Arena should be sold out, as is becoming pretty typical on Saturday nights (if you want to look for tickets available for resale, check out the Tickets link on the top bar).
Follow after the jump for the Tale Of The Tape and more!
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The NHL's online store has a special weekend sale for Christmas shoppers, offering 20% off kids & women's gear of all kinds. But it's only good for a limited time!
Tale Of The Tape
| Buffalo (13-11-1) at Nashville (12-9-4) | |||||||
| BUF Offense vs. NSH Defense | NSH Offense vs. BUF Defense | ||||||
| 5-on-5 | |||||||
| GF/60 | SF/60 | Shoot % | GA/60 | SA/60 | Save % | ||
| BUF Offense | 2.5 (12th) | 30.1 (14th) | 8.2 (15th) | 2.4 (13th) | 30.7 (23rd) | 922 (14th) | BUF Defense |
| NSH Defense | 2.3 (10th) | 32.1 (29th) | 928 (8th) | 2.2 (22nd) | 25.2 (28th) | 8.9 (7th) | NSH Offense |
| GA/60 | SA/60 | Save % | GF/60 | SF/60 | Shoot % | ||
| Special Teams | |||||||
| BUF PP vs. NSH PK | NSH PP vs. BUF PK | ||||||
| GF/60 | SF/60 | Shoot % | GA/60 | SA/60 | Save % | ||
| BUF 5-on-4 | 6.3 (12th) | 59.4 (3rd) | 10.7 (19th) | 4.9 (10th) | 47.4 (9th) | 896 (11th) | BUF 4-on-5 |
| NSH 4-on-5 | 6.2 (18th) | 54.5 (24th) | 885 (15th) | 6.5 (8th) | 49.5 (14th) | 13.0 (11th) | NSH 5-on-4 |
| GA/60 | SA/60 | Save % | GF/60 | SF/60 | Shoot % | ||
The Sabres are a mediocre 5-on-5 team, but the danger lies on special teams, where they've been above-average on both sides of that battle. Just as a series of penalties helped to give up that early lead the Preds built in Vancouver the other night, they need to stay out of the box against Buffalo. The key will be not to fall victim to Patrick Kaleta's antics, as it's his job to agitate the other team in much the same way that Jordin Tootoo does for Nashville.
Buffalo Sabres
The Sabres come into this one on the heels of a 4-1 loss last night at Detroit, a game in which they lost forward Nathan Gerbe when a teammate's skate came up and hit him in the face. He's out for tonight, but fortuantely the injury doesn't appear to be nearly as bad as it could have been, and he shouldn't be out long.
As a team, Buffalo is struggling right now, having won only two of their last 8 games. The Sabres do boast one of the league's hottest rookies so far in Luke Adam, but the main guy to keep an eye out for is one of the least-discussed great goal-scorers in the game, Thomas Vanek:
It's also possible that we'll see Ryan Miller in goal for the Sabres, making his first appearance since taking a hard hit from Boston's Milan Lucic back on November 12. Miller ranks among the game's top netminders, but the question will be whether there's any rust to shake off there.
Nashville Predators News
There will be a couple lineup shuffles for the Predators in tonight's game, their first at home since that November 22nd loss to Edmonton. The Preds have dropped their last two on home ice when you include the Columbus game, and that's a trend they'll want to reverse quickly, as 6 of their next 7 games take place at Bridgestone Arena.
As Josh Cooper reported earlier today, Chris Mueller has been called up from Milwaukee, and Sergei Kostitsyn is still out. Perhaps most interestingly, Anders Lindback gets the start in goal after helping lead the Predators to victory in Vancouver, entering the game after the Preds fell behind 5-3 in the second period.
