Zach Benson<\/a> said after the 4-2 win against the St. Louis Blues on Monday that extended their winning streak to nine games, their longest since a 10-game streak from Nov. 8-27, 2018. But the Sabres were 21-11-5 going into Christmas break that season and the vibes were great too. They went 12-28-5 in their last 45 games. They won seven of their first 10 games in 2022-23 and followed that by losing eight in a row. They missed the playoffs by two points. So, you see the history here. And that’s why there is hesitancy to draw conclusions from a nine-game winning streak. This is still the same team that was 11-14-4 through 29 games before this winning streak began on Dec. 9.<\/p>\nHowever, if you’re a Sabres fan your confidence is fueled by how they’re defending and keeping the puck out of the net. They were allowing 3.55 goals against per game despite a penalty kill that was 85.5 percent before the winning streak began; their goals against during the winning streak is 1.89 per game despite the PK dropping to 81.8 percent. They’re allowing less, winning more puck battles, and getting more saves at 5-on-5. They’re winning at 5-on-5 and not relying on special teams. That is usually a recipe for sustained success. As Benson said after the win in St. Louis, “Everyone knows we have skill, but how many blocks we have on a night, pucks getting out on a wall, it’s just little things like that and it adds up throughout a game. We’re doing all the details right.”<\/p>\n
If that continues, the Sabres will be legit, sustainable and a playoff team. They can’t get fat on a winning streak; they have to be consistent in their approach and resilient to get results, two traits that have eluded them in previous seasons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NHL.com’s weekly Over the Boards mailbag is in full swing this season. Every week, senior writer Dan Rosen…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":382186,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-382185","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=382185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382185\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/382186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=382185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=382185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=382185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}