WASHINGTON — For the first time since 2011, the Buffalo Sabres are going to the Stanley Cup playoffs.
The Sabres ended a league-record 14-season playoff drought on Saturday afternoon when the Detroit Red Wings lost 4-1 to the New York Rangers.
It was an anticlimactic end to the drought, especially after the Sabres had a chance to clinch a postseason berth with a win over the Ottawa Senators on Thursday night. Instead of celebrating in the postgame locker room Thursday, most Sabres players were probably taking their pregame nap during part of the Red Wings’ game against the Rangers. The Sabres play the Washington Capitals at 7 p.m. ET, but they will do so without the pressure of it being a clinching scenario.
The Sabres do have something to play for beyond a spot in the playoffs, though. They came into Saturday tied with the Tampa Bay Lightning for first place in the Atlantic Division at 100 points. Buffalo is also two points behind the Carolina Hurricanes for first place in the Eastern Conference. And the Montreal Canadiens are only two points behind the Sabres for second in the Atlantic. With seven games left in the regular season, Buffalo is working to ensure they have home-ice advantage in the postseason.
But for now, the Sabres can breathe easy knowing they are bringing playoff hockey back to Buffalo for the first time in 15 years.
“There’s some guys that have been here for a while now and were brought here to be part of a playoff team,” Sabres forward Josh Doan said Friday after practice. “Obviously, they’re excited for a chance to kind of prove themselves.
“You notice a lot of those big-name guys you hear about around the league, they get talked about more because of the playoffs. A lot of the guys haven’t been in that situation, so obviously, there’s a lot of excitement. I’m excited for the world to see some of our guys that they haven’t seen in a playoff format or playoff style yet.”
During these 14 seasons without the playoffs, the Sabres have had five different general managers and seven different coaches. In that span, they have twice picked No. 1 in the draft and twice picked No. 2. The Sabres didn’t just miss the playoffs for 14 straight seasons; they rarely came close. The Sabres only reached 90 points in a season once during the drought and picked in the top 10 of the draft 11 times. Those two No. 2 picks, Jack Eichel and Sam Reinhart, were traded in 2021 and have gone on to win the Stanley Cup with other franchises.
Even early in this season, making the playoffs seemed far-fetched. On Dec. 9, the Sabres woke up in Edmonton with an 11-14-4 record that put them in last place in the Eastern Conference. That day, they beat the Oilers to start a 10-game winning streak. Three games into that streak, the Sabres fired general manager Kevyn Adams, who was in his sixth season with the team, and replaced him with Jarmo Kekäläinen. Since Kekäläinen took over, the team’s 32-8-4 record is the best in the NHL.
But the Sabres were also showing signs of improvement before the general manager change. The team dealt with injuries and absences from key contributors early in the season. Josh Norris, Zach Benson, Jason Zucker and Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen were among those who missed time due to injury. And Rasmus Dahlin took a personal leave of absence for three games to be with his fiancée in Sweden while she recovered from a heart transplant.
Through all of that, the Sabres were encouraged by what they saw in the team’s underlying metrics. Despite their poor start, the Sabres had the 10th-best five-on-five expected goal share in the NHL, typically a strong indicator of team success. Since that point, the Sabres have had the best team save percentage in the NHL, which has helped swing more results in their favor.
Dahlin and Tage Thompson have performed at a star level, and the Sabres have gotten secondary contributions from Bowen Byram, Owen Power and Mattias Samuelsson on defense with Zucker, Doan and Alex Tuch among those providing secondary scoring. The Sabres are still one of the youngest teams in the NHL, but this group has now played a lot of games together and has matured along the way. They’re a balanced team with the sixth-most goals for per game in the league and the 10th-fewest goals against.
Now the Sabres will attempt to win the franchise’s first playoff series since the 2006-07 team beat the Rangers in the first round. This Buffalo team isn’t content with just getting to the postseason. They’ve had bigger goals in mind, as Tuch made clear at the end of January.
“You know what, we’re coming in with a lot of confidence,” Tuch said then. “Everybody’s coming in trying to prove themselves, and we’re trying to prove as a team that we’re legit. We’re not just gonna go for the playoffs, we’re gonna go for the Cup, and that’s our goal: Get better each and every day. That’s it. That’s the end goal. We’re not in here just to squeak in.”
