500...

seems to be the number of the week...

on thursday lindy ruff notched his 500th win as a coach, all with the buffalo sabres, in a 3-0 road victory over the san jose' sharks...

on saturday, the sabres finished their short, three-game western road-trip by defeating the phoenix coyotes 2-1 in overtime...the win finally got the team to the visual/total-points .500 mark (18-18-5) at the half-way point of the season...

during the month of december they were within one win of .500 three times, but ended up losing to pittsburgh dec. 11, and florida twice--dec. 17 and dec. 23...

it's a far cry from where they started the season going 3-7-2 in october, 3-9-2 before their climb began with their first back-to-back wins of the season...that translates into a 15-9-3 record over the last 27 games...(note: a pace like that, roughly 22-14-5 over the last 41 games would put them at 90 points for the season--a borderline playoff team...just goes to show how much of a hole they dug for themselves)

the northeast division standings (as of january, 1):

• boston--45 points
• montreal--44
• ottawa--37
• buffalo--34

the northeast division standings (as of january 8):

• boston--49 points
• montreal--49
• buffalo--41
• ottawa--38

a couple of quick notes:

•  since derek roy went down on december 23 the sabres are 4-1-1, the powerplay has scored four goals in 22 attempts (18%) including at least one goal in four straight games and the pk has given up only one goal in 24 attempts (95%)

• sabres leading goal-scorer thomas vanek has 16 goals with a shooting percentage of 12.7%...alex ovechkin has 15 goals with a shooting percentage of 7.7%