Sabres forward Jiri Novotny will miss up to 10 days after injuring his upper body during an overtime win against the Rangers. He was hurt late in the second period Sunday and did not return. The Sabres would not be more specific about his injury. Novotny is in his first full season with the Sabres, and has five goals and nine points in 24 games.

Chris Drury deflected in Teppo Numminen's shot 1:36 into overtime and the Buffalo Sabres got back to winning on the road Sunday night with a 3-2 victory over the New York Rangers.

The New York Rangers are looking for a season-best winning streak. They will have to do it against the Eastern Conference's best team. The Rangers will take on the first-place Buffalo Sabres at Madison Square Garden on Sunday. New York has not won four contests in a row since a seven-game winning streak last season.

Sabres center Derek Roy will miss up to two weeks because of a hand injury. Roy joins a list of ailing Sabres that includes goalie Ryan Miller (abdominal strain) and defensemen Henrik Tallinder (broken forearm) and Toni Lydman (neck strain).

The Sabres are perilously close to the salary cap ceiling of $44 million. They entered last weekend with just $95,000 to spare. After Drew Stafford and Daniel Paille suited up for the overtime victory in New York, the cap room dwindled to about $91,000. Another $4,000 or so would have disappeared every day had the pair remained to prep for Friday's home game against the Florida Panthers. Instead of using that cap space on practice days, the Sabres had little choice but to send the players down with the promise of recalling at least one of them on the next game day. "We explained it to them," Sabres coach Lindy Ruff said after practice Tuesday. "It has to be that way for now. There's nothing more than we're really close to [the cap], and it has to be that way."

Maxim Afinogenov, the Sabres' leading scorer, was knocked out of the team's 4-1 loss to Toronto in the first period Saturday night with an upper body injury. Sabres coach Lindy Ruff refused to give a specific timetable on how long the speedy forward would be sidelined, other than saying it would be "a while."

Sabres center Tim Connolly, out indefinitely with a concussion, was placed on the long-term injured reserve list to free salary cap space. The move, announced by the team Wednesday a day after it was made, frees a portion of Connolly?s $2.9 million salary for a Buffalo team that began the season about $100,000 short of the NHL?s $44 million cap. The Sabres need the cap room. The team has no reserves left on their roster and are down to 20 skaters (12 forwards and six defensemen) after defenseman Henrik Tallinder had surgery last weekend to repair a broken left arm. Tallinder is expected to miss up to two months.

Buffalo goaltender Ryan Miller is the NHL's first star of the month after leading the Sabres to their best start in franchise history. Thrashers winger Ilya Kovalchuk earned second star honours while Ducks defenceman Scott Niedermayer was named October's third star. Starting this season, the NHL is recognizing the top three players of the month rather than handing out separate offensive and defensive awards.