Game 33- Penguins @ Buffalo Sabres

The Penguins will visit a surely frigid Buffalo on Monday night for a clash with the Sabres. This game will be the first since the Penguins' turned in what was easily their worst performance of the season at home on Saturday, a blowout at the hands of the lowly Toronto Maple Leafs. The Sabres are coming off of an overtime loss that saw the previously slumping Alex Kovalev of Montreal beat them in overtime with a snipe past backup goalie Patrick Lalime.

These are two teams that looked great early in the season, but have tailed off of late thanks to injuries, bounces, and just some plain bad luck.

Presumably, it will be Marc-Andre Fleury in goal for the Penguins. Ryan Miller is the confirmed starter for the Sabres, though.

In the Penguins' last visit to HSBC Arena, they lost 4-3 to Buffalo. After taking a 1-0 lead on the now-injured Tyler Kennedy, the Penguins gave up goals to Drew Stafford and Paul Gaustad to go down 2-1. Two beautiful goals from Sidney Crosby put the Pens up 3-2 after two periods, but goals by Gaustad and stud winger Thomas Vanek past former backup goalie John Curry led the Sabres to a 4-3 win.

In two other meetings this year, both at the Igloo, the Penguins smoked Buffalo 5-2 behind Evgeni Malkin and Jordan Staal, and the Sabres came back from a 3-1 deficit to beat the Penguins 4-3 again in what was truly a collapse of epic proportions by the Pens and Dany Sabourin.

The Penguins are dealing with injuries to Hal Gill, Mike Zigomanis, Tyler Kennedy, Ryan Whitney, and Sergei Gonchar. While Whitney will play his first game of the season against Tampa Bay on Tuesday, and Zigomanis is questionable for some of this week's games, there has been no absolute timetable set for the return of any of the other injured players.

Gill is in the Penguins' website's projected lines, but he's on injured reserve at that writer has gotten more than his/her's share of thngs wrong in the past, so we'll assume he's not playing.

Injured Sabres include Timmy Connolly, Gaustad, Nathan Gerbe, Patrick Kaleta, and their captain, Craig Rivet. The two grinders, Kaleta and Gaustad, are questionable for this one. Neither of them played in Montreal on Saturday.

These are two teams that desperately need to turn it around, so look for them to come out hard.

Penguins-

Dupuis-Crosby-Satan
Fedotenko-Malkin-Sykora
Cooke-Staal-Talbot
Wallace-Taffe-Godard

Orpik-Letang
Scuderi-Goligoski
Boucher-Eaton

Fleury

Sabres-

Vanek-Hecht-Pominville
Kaleta-Roy-Stafford
MacArthur-Mair-Kotalik
Paille-Gaustad-Peters

Tallinder-Lydman
Spacek-Sekera
Butler-Numminen

Miller

GO PENS!