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The Buffalo Sabres, as maddening as they can be at times, continue pushing toward grabbing one of the eight spots in the Eastern Conference that will qualify them for the Stanley Cup playoffs. They made a positive move in acquiring Brad Boyes from St. Louis at the trade deadline, and Boyes paid immediate dividends by scoring a goal in the team’s important 3-2 win over the Rangers on Tuesday. Newly acquired players scoring in their first game with a new team is a common occurence in the NHL. Remember Steve Bernier with the Sabres a couple years ago? He scored twice in his first game, then did nothing after that. Sabres’ GM Darcy Regier doesn’t have a very good track record with trade deadline acquisitions. Last year it was Raffi Torres, historically a great playoff contributor, who never quite found a role with the team. Other players he got at the deadline are Bernier, Chris Gratton, Jeff Jillson and  Bob Corkum. It appears that Regier has survived an expected management “purge”  now that new owner Terry Pegula has taken over the team. There was speculation that his reputation of sitting on his hands and not being aggressive in trying to improve the roster wouldn’t be a good fit with Pegula, who clearly wants to make his new toy a championship contender ASAP. My feeling is that Regier deserves a chance to succeed without being handcuffed by financial constraints like he was under previous owners. The trade for Boyes, although not a particularly major move, should send a positive message to the locker room – that the new owner really wants to give those players an honest chance to win. This franchise’s recent history is riddled with examples of weakening the roster for financial, penny-pinching reasons, and the trade for Boyes and his $4 million salary has to boost player morale. The flip side of Regier’s tenure as GM is notable to mention also. As bad as the trade to get Gratton was, Regier turned around and dealt the underachieving forward to Phoenix for a young Daniel Briere.  He made an unpopular deal when he traded fan favorite Matt Barnaby for Stu Barnes, but Barnes turned out to be a major leader on the “no goal” Stanley Cup Finals team. He stole Joe Juneau from Washington for Alexei Tezikov (who?) and got Rhett Warriner from Florida for Mike Wilson. He has shown a knack for finding diamonds in the rough – the problem is he hasn’t been aggressive in keeping those players when their financial worth increases, and most likely that lack of aggression has had more to do with ownership vetoing than bad decisions by Regier. Likewise, coach Lindy Ruff deserves the chance to  find out how well he can coach a team that is allowed to grow into a championship contender without having the heart cut out of it. That has happened twice in Ruff’s time here, initially when the team balked at paying captain and team leader Mike Peca, trading him to the Islanders for Tim Connolly, who has been the anti-Peca leadership-wise in his time here. The team then allowed its’ 2 best players – Briere and Chris Drury (another captain) to walk in free agency – again forcing Ruff to make do with a weakened roster. It’s really unclear whether this season’s Sabre team can make a playoff run, or even make the playoffs, but the future looks bright with the new ownership in place. The attitude change in the locker room should be huge, and hopefully Ruff can coach them into one of those 8 spots, then do what he gained a reputation for in his tenure here – steer them on a long, unexpected playoff run.