Ask any player who’s been part of a Stanley Cup run about the turning point in their team’s playoff push. They’ll almost always tell you it happened off the ice.

It might have been a moment of realization in a hotel lobby, or a breakdown of film on a flight, or, in the case of the 2015 Sabres, something that happened in the locker room.

We lost 3–4 to the Washington Capitals in conference final playoff series.

We were the No. 2 seed, we had just beaten Montreal in four games and we were rolling — but through most of the our games against Washington Capitals, they just stopped us. They didn’t let us play our game. 

We just got handed another opportunity here. From a lottery team to a team that is going all in this year. It's another shot for myself and Chris Higgins. We are going to make most of it.

This room is filled with players who have talent like that – talent you probably haven’t seen much of. David Pastrnak, Kevin Hayes, Jonas Brodin and Jaccob Slavin are one of the best young players in the league this year. Not to mentions players like Steven Stamkos, Jeff Carter, Rick Nash, Henrik Sedin, Marian Gaborik and Derek Stepan.

As tempting as it is to look at the standings, or to try to picture where this team is going, we can’t do that. We really are taking it slow. We’re just trying to improve on what we’ve started here. Tips (Tippett) makes sure we run a very professional locker room, and that we don’t get too high or too low - that's the first impression I got. I can feel this group is something special.

For now, we’re hot — and we want to keep it that way.

Just watch.