Adam, McNabb to make season debuts for Sabres

Eight days after being hired as interim coach of the Buffalo Sabres, Ted Nolan is starting to put his imprint on the team, which has gone 1-2-0 since he took over.

Buffalo's roster shakeup started in earnest Tuesday when rookies Rasmus Ristolainen and Johan Larsson were assigned to the Rochester Americans of the American Hockey League and Nikita Zadorov was returned to his junior team, the London Knights of the Ontario Hockey League.

The Sabres planned to send Mikhail Grigorenko to the AHL for a conditioning assignment, but it was rejected by the NHL so Grigorenko will be back in the lineup Thursday as the Sabres take on the Philadelphia Flyers.

He'll be joined by Luke Adam and Brayden McNabb, both of whom have previous NHL experience but will be making their season debuts for Buffalo on Thursday. Adam made his mark with the Sabres in 2011-12 when he had 10 goals and 20 points in 52 games, but played four games last season.

"It's something I really focused on throughout this year, controlling what I could and not worrying about what anybody else thought," Adam said after the morning skate. "It helped me a lot, I think. I'm going to continue to do that and continue to work and get better at my game."

Adam led the Americans this season with 18 points in 15 games and was tied for the AHL lead with 13 goals when he was called up by the Sabres.

"The guys really welcomed them on the ice [Wednesday]," Nolan said. "There's not many words you can say. Just go out there and do the things that got you here."

Ryan Miller will be the starting goaltender for the Sabres against Ray Emery, who will be making his second start in the Flyers' past six games.

The Flyers are 4-0-1 in their past five games and have been working their way up the Metropolitan Division standings. They are now 8-7-2 since Craig Berube replaced Peter Laviolette as coach Oct. 7.

"I think early on we were tight in third periods and now I believe we know we can win the game and we go out and try to win it," Berube said.

Here are the projected lineups for the Sabres and Flyers on Thursday:

SABRES

Matt Moulson - Cody Hodgson - Drew Stafford

Ville Leino - Tyler Ennis - Steve Ott

Marcus Foligno - Mikhail Grigorenko - Zemgus Girgensons

John Scott- Cody McCormick - Luke Adam

Tyler Myers - Henrik Tallinder

Mike Weber - Christian Ehrhoff

Brayden McNabb - Jamie McBain

Ryan Miller

Jhonas Enroth

Scratched: Mark Pysyk, Corey Tropp, Brian Flynn

FLYERS

Scott Hartnell - Claude Giroux - Jakub Voracek

Brayden Schenn - Vincent Lecavalier - Wayne Simmonds

Matt Read - Sean Couturier - Steve Downie

Jay Rosehill - Zac Rinaldo - Adam Hall

Nicklas Grossmann - Mark Streit

Braydon Coburn - Kimmo Timonen

Erik Gustafsson - Luke Schenn

Ray Emery

Steve Mason

Scratched: Michael Raffl, Hal Gill, Andrej Meszaros