TORONTO -- Just when the Buffalo Sabres spent weeks trying to get finally healthy, along come the injuries again at the worst possible time.
The Sabres will be down three defensemen tonight in the Air Canada Centre as coach Lindy Ruff just announced Tyler Myers will be out with a foot injury suffered when he blocked a shot by Pittsburgh's Paul Martin with about 13 1/2 minutes left Friday night. Ruff wouldn't say much about Myers' status other than to say he was day to day. Myers played 22:12 in the game, including six shifts after taking the shot. Sounds clearly like a case of the foot swelling up once the skate comes off.
Christian Ehrhoff went down Tuesday in Washington with a knee injury, and both Myers and Mike Weber went down last night. Weber took a hard hit into the boards from Matt Cooke early in the second period and Ruff ruled him out last night.
Brayden McNabb and T.J. Brennan are both up from Rochester to join Jordan Leopold, Alex Sulzer, Robyn Regher and Andrej Sekera on the blueline. Brennan has played eight games this year and McNabb has played 21.
"You've got to live off your experiences here," Ruff said. We've had some real good play out of Brayden, some real good play out of T.J. It's just handling the extra minutes and where we put them that's sometimes been a problem. We're going to try to get them some good ice time and see how the other pairs make out."
Ruff said he expects his forwards to pick up the slack and create more offensive pressure on the Leafs tonight to relief some of the heat on his thin D.
As for the Leafs, they'll have rookie Ben Scrivens in goal. He beat the Rochester Amerks last night in overtime, 5-4, by making 33 saves. The Leafs' 0-8-3 skid at home has Ruff concerned.
"I look at it that they would like nothing better than to win this game tonight," Ruff said. "It'll happen sooner or later. It's going to be a dangerous team. It'll be a team that can just flat-out go for it. They can sense we've got a couple of injuries and I feel this is a game where we're going to have to be real good."
Derek Roy, who missed some shifts last night with migraines, is OK and will play.
---Mike Harrington
(www.twitter.com/bnharrington)
