Ryan Miller scratched from tonight’s start with lower body injury

Late breaking news tonight as Buffalo Sabres star goalie Ryan Miller was scratched from his start against the Lightning tonight with a lower body injury. Patrick Lalime will start instead of Miller and Jhonas Enroth was called up to be the backup goalie tonight. Miller was the big winner last night in the Sabres 4-2 win over the Los Angeles Kings and it didn’t appear that Miller suffered any injury.

Mike Harrington of Sabres Edge says that things this morning seemed to be business as usual with Buffalo, but obviously things changed quickly this afternoon. We also find out that Patrick Lalime might be a pretty good poker player in his spare time.

We did not actually see Miller this morning, but that is not all that unusual for a morning skate on a back-to-back situation. Lindy Ruff made it pretty clear to me on Thursday that Miller was playing both games this weekend and Paul Hamilton of WGR approached Lalime this morning about an interview in the event Lalime was playing. Lalime never actually tells you what’s going on but he lets you know too. In this case, Lalime playfully laughed off the request, his normal sign that he was NOT going to be in goal.

Tonight presents an especially tricky task for Patrick Lalime having to slow down the Lightning and Steven Stamkos. If Miller is out for any amount of time, we’ll have to wonder if we’ll see Jhonas Enroth fall back into the saddle as the team’s de facto starter. Enroth did well while Miller missed a few games earlier this year helping lead the team to a 2-1-1 record.