Mike Harrington
Sports Columnist
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Sabres coach Lindy Ruff wasn’t going to let us ring any alarm bells late Wednesday night, and maybe that’s the wisdom of all his years coming to the fore yet again.
Or maybe he was just waiting for official confirmation that he’s got a real problem on his hands. I’ll freely admit the mallet was in my hand to get the clangs started.
That’s because there’s a big picture here that is not one bit pretty and Ruff darn well knows it.
The Sabres are paying Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen $4.75 million in the second year of a five-year, $23.75 million deal. It’s not Igor Shesterkin or Sergei Bobrovsky money by any means, but it’s not chump change either.
And right now, the team’s No. 1 goalie can’t stay on the ice.
Buffalo Sabres goalie Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen left after the first-period of a 5-3 loss to Pittsburgh in a preseason game Wednesday at KeyBank Center.
Whatever injury Luukkonen is dealing with that cropped up in late August or early September rendered him unable to make the start of training camp. It was immediately clear the Sabres sensed an issue when general manager Kevyn Adams went out and inked unsigned veteran Alexandar Georgiev to a real live one-year contract instead of a player tryout offer.
The Sabres said they expected Luukkonen to miss a few days and be ready for the season. When he returned to practice on Sept. 25, he still had two weeks to go before the Oct. 9 opener against the New York Rangers. And it should be noted he’s looked fine in practice.
So the plan was mapped out for Luukkonen to start Wednesday’s game against Pittsburgh in KeyBank Center as well as Friday’s rematch in PPG Paints Arena. Ruff said it was possible he would play an entire game in one of them and the plan for Wednesday was two periods, with Georgiev taking the third.
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Didn’t happen. Luukkonen stopped 11 of 12 shots in the first period of the 5-3 loss, including a nifty glove snare of a drive by Pens veteran defenseman Matt Dumba. But Luukkonen did a wide split while making that save and the bet here is that’s the moment he felt his issue crop up again.
We don’t know what’s wrong with Luukkonen but goalies can be prone to groin issues and those naturally take a while to heal because it’s easy to keep tweaking them. The real concern is if there’s anything wrong with Luukkonen’s surgically repaired hips, which he had done in 2019.
Ruff insisted taking Luukkonen out was all a precaution.
Said Ruff: “The big picture is why risk even more if he’s not feeling quite right?”
“You want to see him healthy,” captain Rasmus Dahlin said of Luukkonen. “He played really good in the first period and I’m sure he’s going to come back for the season to start. I don’t know what’s going on but I know he really wants it.”
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That’s Dahlin hoping, of course. No one really knows what’s up here and it may take a day or two for the situation to fully play out.
Georgiev said he was ready to play because he was already in the mindset he was going in for the third period. So when goalie coach Mike Bales told him in the first intermission that his time was now, the veteran was able to quickly adapt on the fly.
And Georgiev is going to have to keep being ready. If Luukkonen is out for any extended period, it would appear the Sabres will start the season with Georgiev and fellow vet Alex Lyon sharing the crease.
It’s not optimal but it’s hardly terrible either. Georgiev and Lyon have combined for 202 NHL wins in their careers and 88 of them have come in the last two seasons.
As for Devon Levi, the Sabres shouldn’t be calling down to Rochester for him just yet. He still needs AHL seasoning and Lyon and Georgiev have both looked OK in camp. Nothing spectacular, but nothing shabby either.
I was casually talking to Lyon earlier in the day after the pregame skate and he said everyone understands goaltending is a “volatile” position and you have to be prepared for life moving fast on you.
“My experience is that it’s never perfect and it’s very, very rarely clean and concise,” Lyon said. “The name of the game is whoever plays well and wins games is going to continue to play. That’s just the bottom line, the way goaltending is in 2025.”
On Luukkonen, Lyon said, “For sure, I’ve been really impressed. … He’s got all the tools in the toolbox to be a really fantastic goalie in this league. There’s just a million variables that come into play but good guy, hard worker.”
Will the Sabres look for more help in the crease? There’s not much available talent out there right now. Several clubs are looking for upgrades and word is plenty of teams are rubbing their hands together waiting to pounce when the Washington Capitals put 6-foot-4 Clay Stevenson on waivers so they can get him to the AHL and be the starting goalie for Hershey.
At 26, Stevenson is an intriguing specimen. He paired with Hunter Shephard to form a spectacular tandem on Hershey’s 2024 Calder Cup championship team, going as 24-10-2 with a 2.06 goals-against average and .922 save percentage. But he was not nearly as good for the Bears last season (18-8-4, 2.94/.888) and there’s really no room at the inn in the nation’s capital with Logan Thompson and Charlie Lindgren entrenched in the Caps’ crease.
Still, you wouldn’t expect the Sabres to go bargain-bin hunting, when they’ve already committed just over a combined $2.3 million to Lyon and Georgiev this season and have Levi available too.
The Sabres have been counting on Luukkonen. He lasted one period Wednesday. Now we wonder when we’ll see him on the ice again.
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Mike Harrington
Sports Columnist
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