As soon as Jason Pominville heard the topic of discussion was going to be the Buffalo Sabres'

power play, the right winger rolled his eyes and muttered, "Oh, man."

That about sums it up.

The Sabres are on a two-game winning streak heading into tonight's visit by the Dallas

Stars, but their power play is on a 10-game slide. It's a plunge that has them heading toward

the NHL basement and scrambling their personnel.

The Sabres will enter HSBC Arena just 1 for 31 with the man advantage in the past 10 games.

That measly 3.2 percent success rate has dropped their unit to 23rd in the league at 16.9

percent. Before the famine struck, the Sabres ranked 13th at 18.9 percent.

"Our special teams have to be special," Pominville said Tuesday. "They have to be better."

A successful power play has a few key components: solid entries into the opponent's zone;

effective positioning around the net; good passes; and smart shots. Where have the Sabres been

lacking?

Center Tim Connolly said: "We're not getting enough pucks to the net. We're not getting

enough traffic. Our entries have been bad. Our puck retrievals have been bad.

"I'd say we need to improve in all the areas."

Coach Lindy Ruff altered his top unit for Tuesday's practice at the Amherst Center.

Connolly and Derek Roy swapped spots, with Connolly moving back to the blue line and Roy

rotating to the wing. Andrej Sekera assumed rookie Tyler Myers' role as the other defenseman.

Raffi Torres stood in front because Thomas Vanek missed practice to rest, but the left winger

and power-play regular is expected to return tonight.

"Change is good," Connolly said. "We've been working with the same units for a while now,

and they haven't been producing at all. I think they should be changed.

"Whenever you're not scoring on the power play it can be frustrating. It can make the

difference in the game. We've had a lot of games where we've had a power-play chance to win

it, and we haven't converted that chance. Those things are important. Hopefully, we can turn

this around as quickly as possible because it's been pretty disappointing."

The Sabres' last two victories came in overtime, continuing a trend of close games. During

their power-play skid, six games have been decided by one goal, while two others featured

empty-netters by the opponents to increase the margin to two.

If the Sabres' power play had been more successful, they could have had a better record than

3-5-2.

"Come playoff time, you don't get many power plays, and that could be the difference between

winning and losing," Roy said.

The stats indicate the Sabres are getting an ideal chance to snap their slump. Dallas'

penalty-kill unit ranks 26th with a 76.9 percent success rate. The Stars are just 10 for 14

(71.4 percent) in their last four games.

"We've got to figure what's going to work," Roy said. "We have to score one [today]. We have

to. We have to get things rolling and feel good about ourselves going into the last part of

the season."