BUFFALO – Over the past three months, as the Sabres have morphed into a heavyweight that appears capable of wreaking havoc in the postseason, coach Lindy Ruff has contemplated his team’s unique transformation.
The Sabres haven’t infused talent through a trade, big or small, or altered the roster in any significant fashion.
Every player who will face the Vegas Golden Knights on Tuesday at KeyBank Center had a roster spot opening night or began the season with the Rochester Americans.
Following a middling 11-14-4 start, the Sabres have registered a stunning 24-5-2 record since Dec. 9, good for an NHL-best 50 points.
They enter tonight’s game in second place in the Atlantic Division, four points behind the Tampa Bay Lightning.
How did an underachieving team barreling toward another playoff DNQ suddenly find its mojo and roar up the standings?
To Ruff, the genesis of the Sabres’ turnaround can be traced to when center Josh Norris, winger Zach Benson, goalie Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen and some other injured players became healthy. Around the same time, captain Rasmus Dahlin, who had taken a leave of absence to visit his fiancée, returned to the team.
“We had probably four or fives pieces that we were counting on that weren’t in there,” Ruff said.
Ruff doesn’t want to make excuses, but after battling injuries and that early-season adversity, he said, “We finally got better as a team.”
“We started to really be a consistent team night after night,” he said. “You’re not consistent unless you get great goaltending, which we were getting.”
Not surprisingly, their special teams improved. So did their puck management.
Ruff said he knew if the Sabres handled the puck a little bit better, they could heat up.
Everything clicked during that second week in December, and they rattled off 10 consecutive victories.
“We’ve gone on a run,” Ruff said. “But we’ve taken this approach that the game we’ve just played is over, and we’ve got to just continue to get better.”
The Sabres haven’t let up. Fresh off the Olympic break last week, they won three straight road games.
Saturday’s 6-2 win over the Lightning, long one of the NHL’s powers, ranks as perhaps their most impressive triumph this season. They led 4-0 barely 15 minutes into the game.
“I think Saturday made a statement about us as a group,” Sabres center Tage Thompson said. “Obviously, from where we were at the start of the year to now, I think there’s, as we started to get hot, talks about maybe making playoffs.
“And now, I think we’ve proven that not only can we make playoffs, but we can be a real team. … We have that self-belief that we can do something real special this year.”
The Sabres clearly have their most dynamic and deepest team since winning the Presidents’ Trophy in 2006-07 and reaching the Eastern Conference final.
While they enjoyed some nice seasons before beginning their NHL-record 14-year playoff drought – thanks to goalie Ryan Miller’s exploits, they won the Northeast Division in 2009-10 – they never had a team this talented.
In recent months, Thompson said they’ve developed an identity as “a skilled … high-paced team, relentless on pucks.”
“I think when you’re watching a game and you see us at our best, we’re just in teams’ faces,” he said. “They just have no time or space to make plays, and when we get the puck, we’re going north fast, and the D are joining the rush.”
Like many games since December, KeyBank Center will likely be noisy and packed to capacity Tuesday. In hockey-loving Buffalo, fans have been starved for a winner, and they appear to be all in on this year’s squad.
Tuesday’s atmosphere could quickly become electric. The Sabres will honor Thompson, who won the gold medal for Team USA last week, prior to the game.
When the Sabres hit the ice Monday, they saw special “TNT” gold medal towels laid on each seat that helped illuminate the rink.
“When you walked into the bowl, you saw all the towels, it really felt like the first game of the playoffs,” Ruff said. “And I think we can all welcome that type of atmosphere, for sure.”
Dahlin said “it’s going to be nuts in here.”
“I hope we’re going to see a little bit like it was back in the day,” he said. “… I’m fired up. I can’t wait.”
There could be a lot of nights like that in the coming months.
“It’s something you dream about playing in front of every night, and I think hopefully we’ve gotten to the point now where they will be there every night like that,” Thompson said. “… That’s something that gives us a lot of energy, helps our team late in games. I think it’s just easy to get up for games like that, when you come out onto the ice and there’s just 20,000 people screaming. It’s a difference-maker, for sure.”