Buffalo, N.Y. (WGR Sports Radio 550) - Despite a tough start to the 2025-26 hockey season, the Buffalo Sabres continue to find ways to win close games, and have found themselves stringing together a nine-game winning streak to get back into playoff contention heading into the New Year.
The Sabres have gotten a lot of outside credit since the switch made at general manager for the big increase in their level of compete. However, Sabres assistant coach Seth Appert feels that rise in compete has come solely from inside the locker room.
"The commonality is the resilience that you need to have to win close games," said Appert on Tuesday during an appearance with the "Jeremy and Joe Show" on WGR. "You're not going to have your 'A' game all the time. Right now on the schedule in the NHL, you're playing pretty much every other day. [Monday] night was a good example of what I mean by resilience. We scored to go up 1-0, but then [the Blues] come back and they scored two and outplayed us a little bit in the rest of the first period. Now you're entering the second period, you're down 2-1 on the road against a really good defensive team, and it took 15 minutes in the second period to tie it up. ... We're doing a really good job of not letting games get away from us, keeping the game close and not chasing offense right now."
Goaltending has been one of the major conversations of the season, to this point. Alex Lyon started extremely hot and cooled off for a stretch, Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen has been hot and cold, while Colton Ellis was also in the rotation before an injury sidelined him.
Without the third goalie in the rotation, Lyon and Luukkonen have been playing at a very high level during this winning streak.
"I think that goaltending is the ultimate equalizer in any game for your team. It's also the way it makes you feel," said Appert with Joe DiBiase and Nate Geary. "When a goalie gives up a goal, the mistake becomes magnified. The player feels worse about it. ... Sometimes the coaches feel worse about the player because the mistake ended up in your net, and when a goalie makes a save, it's a little bit more of a teaching moment. It's a little bit more of a learning moment of, 'Hey, we can't do that again.' You learn and you move on. They're giving us really high quality goaltending, they're making our opponent earn their goals, and they're giving us a lot of confidence in front of them."
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