There's less than one month to the NHL trade deadline. It's the time of year when teams try to evaluate where they stand in relation to the others, when they try to figure out if the playoffs are a pipe dream or reality.

The Buffalo Sabres look like a playoff team. The Toronto Maple Leafs do not.

The Sabres dominated their cross-border rival Wednesday, scoring creative goals and refusing to let the Leafs get a whiff of momentum in a 5-0 victory. The HSBC Arena crowd, watching its team play at home for the first time since Jan. 17, walked out of the atrium doors in a winning mood for the fourth straight game.

"If we can see more games like this, it's going to be good," said Sabres goaltender Ryan Miller, who posted his second straight shutout. "It's the kind of game we're going to have to play to be a playoff team. In the playoffs, you're going to run into teams that are as boring as heck. Tonight, we weren't boring. We were just good."

The Eastern Conference standings were expected to be a logjam all season with spots five through 12 jockeying for the final few invitations to the postseason. Based on Wednesday's game, ignore anyone lower than 10th.

The seventh-place Sabres were a world apart from the 11th-place Leafs. The Sabres showed passion. The Leafs showed little. The Sabres showed offensive firepower. The Leafs showed they know how to take penalties.

The predictable result put the Sabres 12 points ahead of Toronto and four points up on ninth-place Carolina, the first team outside of a playoff spot. The Sabres are five points back of the fourth-place Montreal Canadiens, who come to town Friday.

The Sabres missed the playoffs last season and want no part of that again. They've climbed into position with an impressive 2009 that shows little sign of letting up. Buffalo is 10-5 since the calendar flipped, which includes 11 games on the road.

"You win on Friday it sends a message that we've been able to move up in the pack with the teams that have been up there all year long," Sabres coach Lindy Ruff said. "You do that after a real tough month — and knock on wood, our schedule gets a little bit lighter after this week — I think it's a real important game for us."

Anyone worried whether jetting across the continent would force the Sabres' play to lag needn't have bothered. Despite coming off a stretch of six games in a row on the road, they were quicker than Toronto from the outset. They had a 2-0 lead 13 minutes in and absolutely controlled play. The Sabres had 24 shots after two periods, while the Leafs had just nine.

The visitors, who suffered a 4-3 overtime loss to Florida at home Tuesday, didn't help themselves by giving the Sabres seven power plays to that point. They have plenty of issues to deal with before the March 4 trade deadline.

"Everybody didn't know what to expect, how we were going to come out," said Sabres defenseman Teppo Numminen, who returned after missing six games with a fractured jaw. "At the start, I think everybody felt really good. Everybody felt fresh."

The Sabres' top line once again earned top billing. Thomas Vanek had the last three Buffalo goals for his fifth career hat trick, which gave him 32 for the season. Tim Connolly and Drew Stafford scored the first two.

Connolly kicked the night off with a tip-in, redirecting defenseman Craig Rivet's pass just 2:23 after the drop of the puck. The center has eight goals in the past eight games.

Refusing to be outdone, the equally hot Stafford scored the goal of the night 10 minutes later. Stafford streaked down the left side, passed the puck to himself between his legs in order to get by defenseman Mike Van Ryn, then tucked a shot under the crossbar from close range to beat goaltender Justin Pogge.

Stafford has five goals in the past five games.

"Anytime you pull off a move like that, those are special moves," Ruff said. "It doesn't happen very often."

Once the cleanup crew collected the hats after Vanek's third goal, it was just a matter of Miller completing his shutout. He finished with 16 saves.

Based on Wednesday, the Leafs' season looks finished in about two months, and the Sabres' year will extend into the playoffs.

"We've been improving our game as the year has gone," Numminen said. "Right now, we're playing well."