Sabres vs. Rangers | How to watch, lineup notes, and storylines

Lindy Ruff has been adamant in training camp about crafting a defensively sound, hard-to-play-against identity for his Buffalo Sabres.

Namely, Ruff wants to have a team that embodies the city it plays in.

“First and foremost, you want something for the fans to wrap their arms around and for me, that's important,” Ruff said.

“Come to the rink and see a team that's going to work extremely hard, that's going to claw and scratch for every inch and get themselves in a place where you're competing and putting yourself in the playoffs by the end of the year.”

The Sabres get their first chance to put their identity on display when they open the season at KeyBank Center against the New York Rangers on Thursday.

The game will mark the Sabres debuts of incoming players Josh Doan and Justin Danforth at forward along with Conor Timmins on defense – all of whom were added in part because of their gritty, defensive games.

That group joins a returning core headlined by Tage Thompson, Josh Norris, Alex Tuch and Rasmus Dahlin.

“I think we're all excited,” Ruff said. “We're all tired of looking at preseason video and practice video and now let's put it to the test against the other team's real lineup ... let's go to work and prove that what we've been working on will make us a winning hockey club.”

The festivities downtown begin with a Party in Ticketmaster Alumni Plaza, which will open with players arriving and walking the Blue and Gold Carpet into the arena at 3:45 p.m. and continue with live music from Nerds Gone Wild.

More information on the Party in the Plaza, along with new features at KeyBank Center this season, can be found here.

The puck drops at 7 p.m. Here’s everything you need to know for the Sabres' season opener.

How to watch

TV (Buffalo broadcast market): MSG

Streaming: Gotham Sports App, ESPN+ (out of market)

Radio: WGR 550

Lineup notes (updated 6:35 p.m.)

Owen Power (illness) and Zach Benson, who took a puck to the face during Wednesday's practice, are both out Thursday and considered day to day. Ryan Johnson and Mason Geertsen enter the lineup in their places.

Here are the lines from warmups:

Kulich providing potential “1-2 punch”

Practice this week brought a new wrinkle to the forward lines as Jiri Kulich flipped with Ryan McLeod as the center to Jason Zucker and Tuch.

Kulich – who missed parts of training camp with a tweaked muscle – is entering his second full season in the NHL after scoring 15 goals in 63 games last year.

Tage Thompson – who played the latter stages of 2024-25 alongside Kulich – offered a promising outlook on the 21-year-old's future.

“I think he can score 30-40 [goals] easily,” Thompson said.

Thompson praised Kulich for his ability to shoot the puck and said that veteran linemates in Tuch and Zucker can help Kulich find a consistent level of confidence.

With Thompson currently playing alongside Josh Norris – the two tied for the NHL preseason lead with seven points each – the Sabres hope that Kulich can help fuel an offensively dynamic second line.

“You know that he can be a guy that can score big goals,” Ruff said of Kulich. “He can skate with the best of them. He can defend well. We're looking at a guy like Tuch who can score and can those two guys kind of complement each other the way him and Thompson did, or the way Norris and Thompson are. That would give us a really good one-two punch with the top two lines.”

Scouting the Rangers

New York opened its season with a 3-0 loss in Pittsburgh on Tuesday. It was the debut for coach Mike Sullivan, who took over the New York bench this past offseason following a decade with the Penguins.

"I think my first observation is, we got a long way to go to become the team we want to become," Sullivan told reporters postgame, according to NHL.com. "I thought we had moments in the game where we were playing the game that we envisioned ... but it's not nearly consistently enough."

New York’s roster is headlined by former Vezina Trophy winner Igor Shesterkin, who stopped 28 of 29 shots in the opener before Pittsburgh tacked on a pair of empty-net goals. Artemi Panarin is the team’s leading returning scorer, having scored 37 goals and 89 points last season.