The battle of New York continues tonight at Madison Square Garden, as the New York Rangers welcome the Buffalo Sabres to town. Tonight’s contest matches two rebuilding teams going in polar opposite directions, and the Rangers will look to change that by the end of the game.

David Quinn’s squad is mired in a five game losing streak (0-4-1), and has been outscored 20-9 since opening the season with two exciting wins. The teams has been getting outshot, outchanced, and out played on a nightly basis over the first three weeks, and Quinn’s job performance has been called into question.

Meanwhile, the Sabres are an NHL leading 8-1-1, and are undefeated when Carter Hutton starts in goal, which he’ll be doing tonight. Led by dynamic young talents like Rasmus Dahlin, Jack Eichel, and Casey Mittelstadt, Buffalo lookes primed to end the NHL’s longest playoff drought and skate well into April for the first time since 2011.

The Rangers’ lines are as follows:

#NYR practice:
Kreider-Zibanejad-Kakko
Panarin-Strome-Buchnevich
Lemieux-Howden-Fast
Smith-Andersson-McKegg
Staal-Fox
Hajek-Trouba
Skjei-DeAngelo

— Brett Cyrgalis (@BrettCyrgalis) October 23, 2019

Player to Watch: Lias Andersson

Any battle with the Buffalo Sabres will always bring extra attention to Lias Andersson, and tonight’s game is no exception to the rule. The selection of Andersson, taken seventh overall in the 2017 Entry Draft, has routinely been called into question. Several bright, passionate minds in the hockey community have banged the table in favor of Casey Mittlestadt, taken one selection after Andersson two years ago. With seven points through his first ten games this season compared to Andersson’s pointless performance through seven, those calls could get louder without a dazzling performance out of Andersson tonight.

Enjoy the game!