I woke up this morning after a couple hearty-enough weekend nights and asked my wife where the five pounds on my stomach came from. Her answer: You run all summer, and not in the winter. It's true enough, my winter is iced hockey -- more anaerobic than aerobic they tell me -- and my summer is 5ks and grassed soccer.

So after church, I headed to the gym, pumped out my normal routine and then popped on a versaclimber (whatever that means) and decided to move my legs for the entire third period of the Caps and Pens, or at least a half-hour. I entered the work-out entertaining the idea that perhaps Buffalo needed an undeserved but perhaps appropo shake-up behind the bench, and left shaking my head at my naivete. Here's what I learned:

The Sabres don't have the wherewithal to take either of those clubs past five games unless they magically acquire two Ryan Millers and both play at once.

Notice I didn't even type "the Sabres right now." See, the thing about both Washington and Pittsburgh isn't that they just have better players than Buffalo. It's that those players adapt their talent into demanding systems and go balls to the wall for a 'W.'

Read the box score, and you'll assume that the Caps came back from 4-1 down to beat the World Champs because Alex Ovechkin had a hat trick and a helper, which isn't entirely false. Washington got to overtime because Ovechkin will shoot from anywhere on the ice, but they won because Mike Knuble would rather break a beer bottle over his face than quit before a whistle.

Ovechkin ripped a half-wall shot off the post that came to just under Marc-Andre Fleury's leg pad. While they Pens searching for the puck, Knuble dug for the rubber like an oil man and forced it past Fleury for the win.

That one play is indicitive of the difference between the league's best five or six teams and the Sabres. Yes, Buffalo has players who give their guts in the paint (and one of their names is Thomas, seriously). They also have players who will dedicate themselves to playing their parts in Lindy Ruff's system.

But they are too many drifters to call them outliers, and something has to scare these guys. No one meaningful has been moved from this system in years. Yes, they didn't pay Brian Campbell and they traded Ales Kotalik, but the former move wasn't one they wanted to make and the latter was a given.

Somebody major has to move.

This team obviously has the talent to be a Top-4 team in the East, but do they have the make-up? Not yet. If I'm Darcy Regier, I've reached a breaking point where I trade the "untradeable," the guys who are viewed better around the league than they are here. I deal a guy like Derek Roy, who is immensely-talented on the ice and liked in the locker room -- as many of the guys are -- but doesn't commit to playing the style the wins games.

See that word I used and love -- wherewithal -- is one of those crazy "intangibles," and what Buffalo has right now is tangible. Talent that wins when it works hard. And that'll work on its best night against any team in the league (save Ottawa. Ha!), but the Sabres players don't give that. Regier is or was hoping his youngsters would find the right mix, but there's a difference between making taking lemons and making lemonade and trying to make lemonade out of potatoes.

On Sunday afternoon, I watched the Caps and Pens do the same things the Sabres try to do. Ever see a Sabres drop pass and think "too fancy?" You can think that, but Washington and Pittsburgh did it all game and guess what? There was a teammate in the right spot to pick it up. That's dedication to positioning and Buffalo doesn't always have that. Same things with using the boards for passes and defensive pinching. As bad as Craig Rivet has been in 2010, he'd look better if his forwards gave more than a passing thought to hustling back to cover for a risk their captain's made.

Back in my naive world, watching Drew Stafford rip his bucket off and make R.J. Umberger's brain come out of his ear was a solid moment for me, one where I wondered if maybe he's getting it. If I'm going to stay consistent with this column, though, I have to offer him up to this season-saving sacrifice, too.

It's time for more team players, and almost everyone's available (I wouldn't trade Ryan Miller, Tyler Myers and Paul Gaustad. I'd prefer not to trade Chris Butler, Jason Pominville and Thomas Vanek, but you can't type a column like this and then offer up crap to the opposition).

The Sabres are in first place in their division with a team that tries 75 percent of the time at best. It's time for a change, one that says, "We're here for hardware, not hat tricks."

Email: nick@wgr550.com