Exhibition Game 1: Penguins waxed by superior Sabres squad

Buffalo brought their big guns and that was enough to easily defeat a young Pittsburgh team

The Penguins brought a very young squad up to Buffalo for the first exhibition game of 2024-25. The Sabres didn’t show any mercy, coming out with a lineup stocked with NHL talent.

The end result was predictable enough at that point, the Sabres shrugged off an early Jesse Puljujarvi goal and then reeled off seven straight goals to coast away with an easy win. Puljujarvi would tack on two more goals later in the third period to set the final at 7-3.

End results and wins/losses don’t matter in the NHL preseason, but individual performances sure do. Here’s the Pens’ lineup for the night.

Puljujarvi’s hat trick will garner attention, as well it should. As mentioned, he looked pretty good on Friday at practice in training camp. Stack on another good day for him on Saturday. His second goal was probably his nicest, showcasing some speed to rush up the ice and nice finishing touch to deke to the backhand for a goal.

Tristan Broz had two assists, continuing what’s been an impressive September for the rookie. Ville Koivunen had one assist, ditto on the keeping up the nice play. Rutger McGroarty added an assist as well in his NHL preseason debut.

On the bad side, the team announced pregame that goalie Joel Blomqvist was scheduled to play the whole game. That only lasted 25:26, the amount of time it took Buffalo to score six goals and Blomqvist received the hook out of mercy to put an early end to his night. It wasn’t close to all on Blomqvist (shots through two periods were 35-12 in favor of BUF) but it wasn’t a pretty sight.

About the only thing that matters is avoiding injury, which seemingly the Pens were able to do. That’s no thanks to Nicolas Aube-Kubel who put a heavy hit on Vasily Ponomarev in the third period of an out of hand game. Ponomarev was down on the ice for a bit but skated off on his own power and stayed on the bench for the remainder of the game, presumably avoiding the worst case scenario of a significant injury requiring immediate medical attention.

At the end of the day, the Sabres dressed a superior team and the talent difference ended up presenting itself. Not too much to ruminate on for the Pens in this one.

The next game is at home for Pittsburgh, against the Sabres on Tuesday. The Pens almost never ramp up participation for their key NHL figures until just before the start of the regular season, so they probably won’t be repaying the favor of a preseason beatdown from such a loaded team.