The Buffalo Sabres are on a three-game losing skid coming into Edmonton on Tuesday night. The night before, the Calgary Flames roundly beat the visitors, who continue their six-game road trip with match No. 4 at Rogers Place. Buffalo sits last in the Eastern Conference, too, while trolling near the bottom of the National Hockey League standings with the Vancouver Canucks and Nashville Predators. Still, just a few points separate the NHL’s plums from the chaff in both conferences. Even the Oilers, Western finalists for the Stanley Cup the last two seasons, are barely in a playoff spot and are only there because of a recent, albeit small, run of success, having won three of their last four games. Not even a month ago, the Sabres dominated the Oilers on Buffalo ice to beat them soundly during a seven-game eastern road trip by Edmonton. So with that in mind, Oilers personnel weren’t taking Tuesday’s visitors lightly. Head coach Kris Knoblauch said after the Oilers’ morning skate ahead of Tuesday’s 7 p.m. start time that the Sabres are good puck-movers and have “a lot of speed, whether it’s their forwards or defencemen.” He says one of his team’s keys to solving Buffalo is to do what they’ve been doing the last handful of games that have come amid a fair bit of practice time: Defend and check well to create offensive chances. “We want to make it easier for us ... Hopefully, we can start right from the start,” Knoblauch told reporters. Defenceman Mattias Ekholm said the Oilers’ confidence is coming from both sides of the ice and that the defence feeds off the offence’s success and vice versa. “Obviously, you’ve got to play good defence to get the chances and to win games, but at the same time, when you get some good offence, that helps your defence in a way as well,” Ekholm said. “Both ways help each other in a funny way, but both things seem to be working a lot better lately.” Crude remarks Projected Oilers lineup Forward Defence Goal Projected Sabres lineup Forward Defence Goal
