Morning Skate: Ritchie out for "5 to 7 days," Lehtonen has chance to impress coaching staff

DALLAS — Brett Ritchie is expected to miss five to seven days with an upper-body injury.

General manager Jim Nill gave that quick update after the Stars morning skate on Saturday. He didn’t have any further details to share, and this comes one day after Stars coach Ken Hitchcock said he didn’t want to address the injury in depth because it would be best if Nill or the doctors addressed.

Martin Hanzal, who is going to miss Saturday’s game with a lower-body injury, did skate for 45 minutes by himself on Saturday. Hitchcock said it was a good hard skate, and the team will work Hanzal back into practice on Sunday.

Lehtonen gets the start

Kari Lehtonen will make his third start and fifth appearance of the season for the Dallas Stars. Lehtonen is 1-3-0 with a 2.91 goals against average and .896 save percentage. He made 29 saves in a 2-1 win against the Calgary Flames on Oct. 27.

Hitchcock said he’s been impressed with Lehtonen’s work this season, and a strong showing Saturday could lead to more starts in the future.

“He did a great job in Calgary and we hope he does the same job again. And that’s what your second goalie does. But in fairness to him, he’s got a great advantage on people, he thinks like a starter,” Hitchcock said. “He wants more and if he plays really well tonight we’ve got to think about that. We’ve got to think about maybe adding some more games into the mix for him. Because if he plays well again, he’s helping us alot.”

Ristolainen out

Buffalo will be without top-pairing defenseman Rasmus Ristolainen, who sustained an upper-body injury against the Arizona Coyotes on Thursday.

Ristolainen averages 27 minutes and 10 seconds per game of ice time, so it’s a big loss for the Sabres.

“Obviously you lose a guy like that logs a lot of minutes and plays in every situation, we’re going to have to spread that around a little bit and rely on other guys,” Sabres coach Phil Housley said. “But other guys are getting opportunities, that’s the way they’ve got to look at it and understand they (Dallas) have a big strong forward group, so we’re going to have to pay attention to detail in our defensive zone.”

Sabres Projected lineup

Evander Kane — Jack Eichel — Jason Pominville
Benoit Pouliot — Ryan O’Reilly — Kyle Okposo
Zemgus Girgensons — Griffin Reinhart — Seth Griffith
Matt Moulson — Johan Larsson — Jordan Nolan

Marco Scandella — Justin Falk
Jake McCabe — Matt Tennyson
Victor Antipin — Taylor Fedun

Robin Lehner
Chad Johnson

Scratched: Nicholas Baptiste
Injured: Justin Bailey (lower-body), Rasmus Ristolainen (upper-body)

Stars projected lineup

Jamie Benn — Tyler Seguin — Alexander Radulov
Antoine Roussel — Jason Spezza — Remi Elie
Jason Dickinson — Mattias Janmark — Devin Shore
Gemel Smith — Radek Faksa — Tyler Pitlick

Marc Methot — John Klingberg
Dan Hamhuis — Greg Pateryn
Esa Lindell — Stephen Johns

Kari Lehtonen
Ben Bishop

Scratched: Jamie Oleksiak
Injured: Martin Hanzal (lower body), Brett Ritchie (upper body)