BUFFALO – In the short term, only one of the three injured players who returned to practice Tuesday, winger Zach Benson, can help the reeling Sabres.
Coach Lindy Ruff said he expects Benson, who was hospitalized last week after a puck cut his face in practice, to play Wednesday against the Ottawa Senators in KeyBank Center.
Sporting a full “fishbowl” shield to cover his black eye and cut, Benson took reps on Tuesday alongside center Tage Thompson, who moved over from right wing, and Alex Tuch.
The Sabres, who are trying to avoid their first 0-4-0 start in franchise history, sorely need Benson’s energy and tenacity. So far, they’ve been outscored 10-2.
NHL teams inevitably endure three-game losing streaks during a six-month regular season. For the Sabres, who have an NHL-record 14-year playoff drought, dropping a few games to begin another season magnifies their recent woes and puts more pressure on them.
Adding Benson to the top line could give them a boost.
“We’ve seen that connection and his ability to make plays in small ice,” Ruff said. “With the absence of (Josh) Norris, you put another guy in like that who can help on the offensive side, I think it’s a big addition for us.”
Meanwhile, if they keep progressing, No. 1 goalie Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen and winger Jordan Greenway, both of whom practiced Tuesday, could play in the near future.
“I thought both guys looked good,” Ruff said. “I thought Greenway really skated well. But … first team practice, so he’ll need a couple of those at least.”
More on Luukkonen and Greenway later.
Benson, who practiced with a bandage covering his cut, experienced a difficult few days. After a puck cut him last Wednesday, he got stitched up and returned to the session.
Later in the day, he said “it kind of kept blowing up on me,” so he went to the emergency room.
“Thankfully, I did,” he said. “I had to get some blood removed out of my face. I’m thankful for the doctors and the care I had.”
On Thursday, Benson, 20, watched the Sabres’ season opener, a 4-0 loss to the New York Rangers, from the hospital. He said he started skating again Sunday.
“Definitely put things in a different perspective,” Benson said of being hospitalized. “Obviously, it wasn’t super, super alarming or concerning, but, obviously, (if) you’re staying the night in the hospital, you’re seeing life from a different perspective.”
Luukkonen, 26, hadn’t been seen since Oct. 1, when a new lower-body injury forced him out of a preseason game against the Pittsburgh Penguins after 20 minutes.
The Finn also missed the first week of training camp after tweaking a lower-body injury late in the summer.
“It’s kind of in a similar spot, but different thing, I would say,” Luukkonen said. “I don’t know exactly when it happened, but it was somewhere in that Penguins game, in the first period, and felt like a cramp or something kind of similar to that, but it was something like a deep muscle or something.”
Luukkonen said an MRI revealed something was wrong. Still, he never expected he would miss almost two weeks.
“But I feel fine,” he said. “It’s just, right now, we have to kind of make sure that everything is strong enough and feels good enough to play.”
Having played just one period of hockey and missed about three weeks of practice, could Luukkonen be sent to the AHL for a rehab assignment?
“I think that’s always a possibility,” Ruff said. “We’ll just always evaluate how these couple practices go and if we get him game ready. We’re getting really good hockey out of (Alex) Lyon.”
Lyon, 32, has subbed superbly for Luukkonen, keeping the Sabres in all three games while registering a .919 save percentage.
“He has played unbelievable, and it’s been fun to watch,” Luukkonen said. “He reminds me of the older guys who we had here, like even (Craig Anderson) and (James Reimer), with how well he reads the game. He has that poise and calmness in his game.”
Greenway, 28, hadn’t practiced since late March, when the mid-body injury he underwent surgery to repair in December ended his season.
In July, he underwent another surgery.
“There’s been a lot of ups and downs, for sure,” Greenway said. “It’s been, mentally, the most probably frustrating thing that I’ve been through in my career.”
Naturally, Greenway did not want to have a second surgery.
“The first … couple weeks, couple months of the summer, I was getting rid of a lot of the pain that I had,” he said. “But there’s just one area that I just couldn’t get over the hump.”
Greenway took reps at left wing alongside center Jiri Kulich and Mason Geertsen, a sign Kulich could be benched against Ottawa.
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Ruff said Sabres defenseman Michael Kesselring, who has been sidelined since late in camp after aggravating an injury, is “progressing.”
“I’ve kind of chatted with him almost every day,” he said. “He’s feeling pretty good. When he returns to skate I don’t think is that far off.”