A healthy scratch the past two games, Sabres forward Ville Leino will be back in the lineup tonight in Montreal, and boy does he...not sound all that excited about it.
Per the Buffalo News (which has the audio), Leino was asked about the fact he has no goals and and just 12 assists in 50 games, and whether that lack of offense was weighing on him.
“I’m sure it weighs on me, too, but obviously there’s a lot of other guys on the team, too, that hasn’t been able to really help that much either,” he said.
Which is absolutely true, though even relative to most of the other struggling Buffalo players, Leino has had a poor season.
“There’s so much going on in here in the organization with how this team’s been lately,” he said, before acknowledging he “can’t really do anything about” the talk his days with the club are numbered.
The Sabres still have both their compliance buyouts left. One will surely be used on Leino, who’s signed through 2016-17 with a cap hit of $4.5 million. Drew Stafford is another potential candidate, though he’s been playing a bit better of late.