{"id":213569,"date":"2026-03-10T20:01:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T20:01:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/213569\/"},"modified":"2026-03-10T20:01:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-10T20:01:07","slug":"sabres-ducks-success-this-season-more-than-just-luck","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/213569\/","title":{"rendered":"Sabres\u2019, Ducks\u2019 success this season more than just luck"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg\">An optimal NHL season should align with expectations to some degree, but mix in a couple of surprises to keep things fresh. This season, the NHL has completely delivered on that formula. Looking over the standings, nobody should be shocked to see the <a class=\"text-secondary underline underline-offset-2\" hreflang=\"en\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dailyfaceoff.com\/teams\/carolina-hurricanes\/line-combinations\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Carolina Hurricanes<\/a> on top of the Metropolitan Division, or the <a class=\"text-secondary underline underline-offset-2\" hreflang=\"en\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dailyfaceoff.com\/teams\/colorado-avalanche\/line-combinations\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Colorado Avalanche<\/a> leading a strong Central Division. But you\u2019d probably be lying if you said you expected the <a class=\"text-secondary underline underline-offset-2\" hreflang=\"en\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dailyfaceoff.com\/teams\/buffalo-sabres\/line-combinations\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Buffalo Sabres<\/a> to be in first place in the Atlantic Division after the trade deadline, or the <a class=\"text-secondary underline underline-offset-2\" hreflang=\"en\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dailyfaceoff.com\/teams\/anaheim-ducks\/line-combinations\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Anaheim Ducks<\/a> to have poll position in the Pacific Division.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg\">The questions then becomes, are the Sabres and Ducks having breakout seasons that will propel them into contender status for years to come? Or are they, for lack of better term, flukes? It\u2019s hard not to be impressed with Buffalo, who has vaulted themselves to the top of a hyper-competitive Atlantic Division, and currently sport a +32 goal differential. Anaheim has a slightly stronger whiff of flukiness to them, as their -10 goal differential is only fourth best in their division.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg\">On Tuesday\u2019s episode of\u00a0<a class=\"text-secondary underline underline-offset-2\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=PhlANX6WuPM\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" hreflang=\"en\">Daily Faceoff LIVE<\/a>,\u00a0hosts Tyler Yaremchuk and Steve Peters discussed just how real the Sabres and Ducks are this season.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg\">Tyler\u00a0Yaremchuk:\u00a0Buffalo\u2019s the surprise, but Buffalo\u2019s also showing that they\u2019re maybe the better team. I know there\u2019s going to be people who do the whole \u201cAh, they\u2019re PDO merchants.\u201d I looked at Natural Stat Trick, they\u2019re 5-on-5 PDO is seventh-highest in the NHL, but you look at who\u2019s above them and it\u2019s Boston in their division, Tampa Bay\u2019s ahead of them. I don\u2019t like just pointing to PDO all the time and being like, they\u2019re lucky. There\u2019s more that goes into that. Getting good goaltending isn\u2019t necessarily lucky. Look at the Ducks, their 5-on-5 save percentage is fifth worst in the NHL. Two of the teams that are worse just happen to be in their division with the <a class=\"text-secondary underline underline-offset-2\" href=\"https:\/\/oilersnation.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" hreflang=\"en\">Edmonton Oilers<\/a> and <a class=\"text-secondary underline underline-offset-2\" hreflang=\"en\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dailyfaceoff.com\/teams\/vegas-golden-knights\/line-combinations\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Vegas Golden Knights<\/a>, who are getting the worst 5-on-5 goaltending in the NHL.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg\">You can catch the full discussion and the rest of Monday\u2019s episode here\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An optimal NHL season should align with expectations to some degree, but mix in a couple of surprises&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":213570,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164],"class_list":["post-213569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=213569"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213569\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/213570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=213569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=213569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=213569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}