The Buffalo Sabres opened their 2016-17 season by getting their asses handed to them, 4-1, courtesy of the Montreal Canadiens.
Worse, the Sabres lost forward Evander Kane to injury after he hit the boards hard in the second period. Kane was taken off the ice on a stretcher, was brought to a local hospital, and his status is still very much up in the air to you and me.
With Jack Eichel and Kyle Okposo already out of the lineup, the Sabres certainly didn’t want to see Kane go down . . . but imagine how much worse the mood in the 716 would have been this morning had Johan Larsson suffered an injury after he was slew-footed by Montreal’s Andrew Shaw.