‘“There were some games at the beginning of the year you just sat back and said, ‘Wow, man, is he playing hard,’” coach Lindy Ruff said Tuesday after the Sabres practiced. “And I haven’t seen that (return). It’s a discussion I’ve had with him. We’re at crunch time now, and crunch time means you got to go even harder and got to be noticed even more,” he said. “We’re desperate to move up and we’re desperate to have guys play above where they’ve been at, and we need it even more so now with the absence of some other key players.”’