{"id":275240,"date":"2025-10-03T18:40:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-03T18:40:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/275240\/"},"modified":"2025-10-03T18:40:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-03T18:40:10","slug":"sabres-starting-goalie-luukkonen-expected-to-miss-season-opener","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/275240\/","title":{"rendered":"Sabres starting goalie Luukkonen expected to miss season opener"},"content":{"rendered":"

BUFFALO, N.Y. – Buffalo Sabres<\/a> coach Lindy Ruff anticipated opening the season next week without starting goalie Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen<\/a>, who suffered a lower-body injury in his preseason debut.<\/p>\n

Ruff listed Luukkonen as week to week without disclosing the nature of the injury on Friday. Ruff would only say the injury is separate from the lower-body issue that sidelined the 26-year-old for the start of training camp two weeks ago.<\/p>\n

The latest injury occurred Wednesday, when Luukkonen was unable to return after the first period of a 5-3 loss to the Pittsburgh Penguins<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Buffalo closes its preseason schedule at Pittsburgh on Friday and opens its season hosting the New York Rangers<\/a> on Thursday.<\/p>\n

Luukkonen’s absence will force the Sabres to turn to two offseason free agent additions in Alex Lyon<\/a>, who was projected to be the backup, and Alexandar Georgiev<\/a>. Buffalo signed Georgiev last month in a precautionary move after Luukkonen sustained his initial injury in the weeks leading up to camp.<\/p>\n

The Sabres are also expected to be without defenseman Michael Kesselring<\/a>, who was also listed week to week after aggravating an undisclosed injury on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Buffalo’s blue line is already banged up with Owen Power<\/a> (undisclosed) and Mattias Samuelsson<\/a> (upper body) missing practice this week. Ruff expects both to be available for the opener.<\/p>\n

Copyright \u00a9 2025 ESPN Internet Ventures. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BUFFALO, N.Y. – Buffalo Sabres coach Lindy Ruff anticipated opening the season next week without starting goalie Ukko-Pekka…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":275241,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[142389,5229,1720,5723,142383,142386,142384,142385,405,403,1302,50,5226,5225,293,5228,5227,142388,142387,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-275240","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-142389","9":"tag-america","10":"tag-buffalo-sabres","11":"tag-espn","12":"tag-georgiev-alexandar","13":"tag-kesselring-michael","14":"tag-luukkonen-ukko-pekka","15":"tag-lyon-alex","16":"tag-new-york","17":"tag-new-york-city","18":"tag-new-york-rangers","19":"tag-news","20":"tag-newyork","21":"tag-newyorkcity","22":"tag-nhl","23":"tag-ny","24":"tag-nyc","25":"tag-power-owen","26":"tag-samuelsson-mattias","27":"tag-united-states","28":"tag-united-states-of-america","29":"tag-unitedstates","30":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","31":"tag-us","32":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115311701185021368","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275240\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}