It can be easy to forget now, but Thompson’s and Dahlin’s paths to stardom were not always so clear, at least to the outside eye.
Thompson was traded from St. Louis to Buffalo as part of the Ryan O’Reilly deal in the summer of 2018. He watched the organization that drafted him win the Stanley Cup the following season as he was trying to find his footing in the NHL. His next season began in Rochester, and when he got a shot to play for the Sabres that November, a crash into the boards in the final minute of his very first game left him with a season-ending shoulder injury.
Dahlin, meanwhile, flashed the world-class skill that earned him No. 1 pick status immediately upon entering the league. But it took years for him to truly assume the role of a No. 1 defenseman – and to feel comfortable enough in his new home to truly be himself: the brash, outgoing, physical defender who approaches every shift as if there’s no one on the ice who can stop him.
Things came together for both players late in the COVID-shortened 2020-21 season, when an exodus of past Sabres veterans cleared the way for Dahlin, Thompson and other young players to truly assume ownership of the team.
Thompson scored 38 goals the following season; he’d scored a combined 18 in the four seasons prior. Dahlin was named to his first All-Star Game. They were the faces of a Sabres team that was suddenly young and promising again.
But success isn’t always linear. The Sabres came a point shy of missing the playoffs in 2022-23, then dipped each of the past two seasons. Players were traded; coaches changed. The city, rightfully, grew impatient. Early deficits were met with boos.
“Tommer and Ras have been here longer than me, but there have been some dark times, for sure, and a lot of down moments where you don’t know how we’re gonna get out of it, or what’s gonna happen,” said Mattias Samuelsson, who was drafted one day after Dahlin and made his Sabres debut in 2021.
“Going through it and seeing the light at the end of the tunnel now, and seeing the guys you’ve been battling with and in the trenches with for five-plus years, do it as a group together, I think it makes it way more special, for sure. It feels rewarding to be one of the guys who has been in it from the beginning of, I would say, this Sabres era. It’s a sense of accomplishment, I would say, that we finally did it. Did it with the guys that we’ve been in the trenches with.”
