PHILADELPHIA — The Philadelphia Flyers have announced All-Star defenseman Chris Pronger will not play in Game 2 of the team’s Eastern Conference Quarterfinal series against the Buffalo Sabres (5 p.m. ET, TSN).
Pronger has not played since March 8 due to a broken right hand. He’s been skating on his own for the past week, and has done very little puckhandling. On Thursday he skated for 51 minutes with injured teammate Oskars Bartulis and Ian Laperriere, who led the drills. Pronger mostly did skating drills; the only time he touched the puck was on a drill where he skated with it laterally along the attacking blue line from the wall to center of the ice, but rather than take shots, he let the puck roll off his stick.
On Friday, CSNPhilly.com reported Pronger would miss Game 2 and Game 3 on Monday (7 p.m. ET, VERSUS, TSN). The Flyers continue to list Pronger as day-to-day.
Persson to play? — The Buffalo Sabres have been waiting a long time for defenseman Dennis Persson to develop into a useful NHL player. All that waiting is about to pay off.
Persson, the Sabres’ first-round pick (No. 22) in the 2006 Entry Draft, was recalled from Portland of the American Hockey League on Saturday and likely will make his NHL debut in Game 2 against the Philadelphia Flyers here at the Wells Fargo Center (5 p.m. ET, TSN).
Persson had 4 goals, 17 points and a plus-5 rating in 64 AHL games.
“He’s played very well,” Sabres coach Lindy Ruff said of Persson. “He’s probably been their best defenseman. He’s just a good two-way player, a good two-way defenseman.”
Shaone Morrisonn was injured in Game 1 and will not play. Andrej Sekera (upper-body strain) missed Game 1, and while Ruff said Sekera “is better,” he didn’t say if he would play in Game 2.
Ruff traditionally has played a player when he’s been called up, and he didn’t sound like this situation with Persson would be any different.
“We’ve never really done that (called a player up and sat him),” said Ruff. “Unless it’s gone bad for a certain individual or he hasn’t been able to handle it, otherwise they play.”
The right mindset — Despite winning Game 1, the Sabres know they have to be better if they want to leave Philadelphia with a 2-0 series lead.
They generated just 25 shots and their only goal came from grinding forward Patrick Kaleta.
The theme in the Sabres’ locker room Friday was a need to get better — and if that’s the mindset coming from the players, Ruff will be very happy.
“I think to a man you look at the individuals and there’s something almost every guy could turn up a little bit in his game,” said Ruff. “We look at it like we won one, we didn’t give up a lot because we wanted to stay away from the high-quality rush. I think sometimes we erred a bit on the safe side. Tonight we’re going to get after it.”
No frustration in Philly — The Flyers were the third-highest scoring team in the League during the regular season, with an offense that featured seven 20-goal scorers. However, despite getting 35 goals on net — plus another 16 that were blocked — they were unable to put one past Sabres goalie Ryan Miller.
However, don’t think the Flyers have lost any confidence in their ability to score goals.
“We’ve been able to score goals all year,” said coach Peter Laviolette. “There’s a lot of confidence we will when we go back at it today.”
Laviolette said he was happy with the effort he saw from his players in Game 1 Thursday. The only problem he had was with the result.
“I don’t think anybody had a problem with the effort,” he said. “What we had a problem with was the result. We’re in a result-oriented business right now, and you have to win.”
Contact Adam Kimelman at akimelman@nhl.com. Follow him on Twitter: @NHLAdamK
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