How Buffalo ended its playoff drought, became Cup threat
The Buffalo Sabres' meteoric rise, from 30th in the NHL standings on Dec. 8 to tied for fifth on April 5, can be traced back to a snowy Tuesday night in Edmonton.
The Lindy Ruff-coached squad was in the middle of a six-game road trip, having dropped three in a row to Philadelphia, Winnipeg, and Calgary. Next up: Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl, and the Oilers in Game 30 of 82.
Buffalo grabbed a 3-0 lead despite battling injuries and iffy officiating. Then McDavid scored 10 seconds into the third period, Draisaitl assisted on a second Oilers goal, and McDavid sniped again with two seconds left to force overtime.
Undeterred, the Sabres attacked OT with pace and purpose. Winger Alex Tuch, who grew up on Sabres hockey as a native of nearby Syracuse, New York, fired the puck through the Oilers goalie's five-hole in the opening shift.
The 4-3 victory Dec. 9 was fairly insignificant at the time, just the Sabres' 12th in 30 games. Now? It marks the beginning of the end for the longest postseason drought in NHL history. With the Red Wings losing to the Rangers on Saturday, the 100-point Sabres clinched a playoff spot for the first time since 2011.
"I'm happy for the city. I'm happy for all the guys who have been grinding here for years - the equipment managers, the trainers, my teammates," captain Rasmus Dahlin told reporters in Washington following Saturday night's 6-2 loss to the Capitals.
"It's really hard to really focus on that right now with a loss, but I'm really proud of the group," Tuch added. "It's been a long time coming."
The 46-23-8 Sabres, currently tied for second in the Atlantic Division, have been virtually unstoppable since the Edmonton win, maintaining a league-high .787 points percentage over almost four months. Amazingly, they've lost in regulation only four times since the Olympic break in late February.
Let's unpack Buffalo's nonlinear path to Stanley Cup dark horse status.
Era of missteps and misery
Buffalo has advanced to the Cup Final twice in 54 seasons, losing in 1975 and 1999. Its modern era began in 2011, when billionaire Terry Pegula purchased the franchise for $165 million. The oil and gas tycoon pledged to bring a championship to one of the United States' traditional hockey markets.
"I want to run the team to win the Stanley Cup. So, whatever that involves, I guess we've gotta figure it out. If I want to make some money, I'll go drill a gas well. I don't need to make it in the hockey business," Pegula said during his introductory press conference.
Buffalo snuck into the postseason in 2010-11 then spent most of the next decade wandering aimlessly. The club finished with the NHL's worst record in three of five seasons from 2013-18. Painfully, it even missed the postseason when the field expanded to 24 teams for the 2020 pandemic playoff bubble.
Jack Eichel, picked second overall in 2015 after the Sabres tanked for McDavid, was hailed as the savior. But the team never surrounded the stud center with enough talent and shipped him to Vegas in 2021 following a medical dispute. Respected NHL veteran Ryan O'Reilly talked openly in 2018 about the Sabres being "stuck in this mindset of just being OK with losing."
Player after player left the organization and found success elsewhere, including Cup winners Eichel, O'Reilly, and Sam Reinhart. A major issue within the team bubble was Pegula meddling with hockey decisions while failing to provide management with the resources to spend to the salary cap or build out a proper staff. The Sabres were often the butt of the joke around the NHL.
"There's been a lot of stress in this organization and, on this organization, pressure, for the last decade," former coach Don Granato told me prior to the 2022-23 season. "We all know that. Even from the outside. When you don't make the playoffs for a long time, that's going to wear on you pretty heavily."
That campaign offered a glimmer of hope - no playoff berth yet tremendous internal growth and 90 standings points for the first time in a dozen years. However, Granato was fired after a lackluster 2023-24 season. Pegula then rehired Lindy Ruff, the head coach whom he inherited upon buying the team.
Top defenseman Dahlin and top forward Tage Thompson both arrived in Buffalo in 2018. At multiple points, it was difficult for the longest-tenured Sabres to see the light at the end of the tunnel. The team seemed to be perpetually rebuilding and constant losing wears down players of all statures.
"A lot of years of frustration," Thompson said recently. "We've always known that we can get to the spot where we're at currently. It was just one of those things where (Dahlin and I) would talk and try to figure out, 'What can we do better?' You can't really control anything else on the outside, what other people are going to do. You can only really control what you're going to do out there and what you're going to do off the ice to get ready for games."
"All the years I've been here, we've had a pretty good roster," added 2021 No. 1 pick Owen Power, a fourth-year pro. "But our record hasn't shown it. You'd be sitting around after losses, going, 'When's it gonna turn the other way?'"
Slow burn and the 'wake-up call'
The Sabres as a whole are a Frankenstein's monster constructed by three general managers. Of the 28 active or injured players on the NHL roster, Jason Botterill acquired four (notably Dahlin and Thompson), Kevyn Adams brought in 20, and current GM Jarmo Kekalainen has picked up four in short order.
Adams, who was fired six days after the victory over the Oilers, led the group to its December inflection point through strong drafting, patience, and a few savvy trades. The Sabres are like a skyrocketing start-up tech company - a seemingly overnight success that's, in fact, been several years in the making.
For most of Adams' five-plus years in charge, Buffalo's roster included impressive individual pieces such as Dahlin, Thompson, Tuch, Power, JJ Peterka, and Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen. Hype and hope rightfully followed. Yet there was always something not right: a palpable lack of cohesion on the ice.
Buffalo was too young. Too soft physically, mentally, emotionally. Too fragile with the lead. Too offensively focused. Too indistinguishable from the rest.
"Experience is probably the hardest thing that you can really piece together in a hockey dressing room," depth forward Beck Malenstyn said. "It's something you have to earn, and it's hard to go out and acquire guys who have played 800, 900 games and done it the right way the whole time. Realistically, if you don't have that option, it has to come through experience and growth."
The past four months have been a perfect storm of good health; a former No. 1 prospect pool coming of age; forwards and defensemen adjusting to Ruff's up-tempo two-way style; elite goaltending; and a cultural shift off the ice.
One of the room's new slogans is "Everybody ropes, everybody rides." Team-first habits are top priority because every individual benefits from team success.
Kekalainen, a longtime scout and executive, is a charismatic leader whose presence can be felt in every room he walks into. The midseason arrival of the ex-Blue Jackets GM was a "wake-up call" to the dressing room, Power said.
"The talent - the skill alone - is not going to get you the wins in this league. Every team is too good," Kekalainen said during his introductory press conference in December. "You have to work. You have to compete. You have to be relentless. That's what I want the identity of the Buffalo Sabres to be."
Dahlin, 25, told theScore in January that he felt "like a teenager again" amid the wins and immaculate vibes. He was asked in March about Sabres players sticking up for each other on the ice, unlike in years past. How do you build that kind of team chemistry? "Drink beers," he responded with a laugh.
New brand of Sabres hockey
Buffalo drafted Zach Benson in 2022 and Noah Ostlund in 2023. The club acquired Peyton Krebs and Josh Doan in blockbuster trades in 2021 (Eichel to Vegas) and 2025 (Peterka to Utah), respectively. Each player is a young, detail-oriented forward with offensive gifts. Most crucially, each is dogged.
It's more subtle than Dahlin and Thompson evolving into bona fide superstars, but that group of irritants has changed the complexion up front. The forward group, which also includes recent upgrades at center in Ryan McLeod (2024), Josh Norris (2025), and Sam Carrick (2026), is now as diverse as it is deep.
"We've either traded for or developed internally these different types of players. Not just pure skill players - guys that are really good at bringing others into the fight with them and are good forecheckers and relentless on the puck no matter the zone," Sabres assistant coach Seth Appert said.
Benson - "the ultimate pest," as Appert put it - and Doan are adept at hunting down and owning pucks, attacking from the high-danger areas of the offensive zone, and providing a layer of blue-collar defensive work from the wings present on every team that's serious about winning in the playoffs.
"We're not just a rush team anymore. We're a good forechecking team too. We're better in the offensive zone than we've been previously, and we're scoring more netfront goals now," Appert said. "If you're reliant on your rush game, sometimes you're actually relying on the other team. It's hard to generate rush chances if the other team is not trading them with you."
Buffalo was tied for 17th out of 32 teams in puck-battle win percentage ahead of Saturday's slate of games, up from 25th in 2024-25, according to Sportlogiq. The battle-winning has coincided with an uptick in scoring chances (16.9 quality chances per game versus 14.7 last year) and expected goals (3.16 xG per game versus 3.10).
"When we get the puck, we're going north fast, and the (defensemen) are joining the rush. That's our biggest asset: our D-corps and the fact that we have so many offensive, mobile (D-men) who can join the rush and add threats," Thompson said of a blue line that features Dahlin and Mattias Samuelsson on the top pair and Power with Bowen Byram on the second.
"That fourth wave coming in is really tough for teams to handle. Because they can skate so well, they can make their gaps tight for other teams trying to leave the zone. It's suffocating to play against."
As Power remarks, the Sabres are simply playing a "better brand of hockey" in Ruff's second year behind the bench. The style better aligns with protecting leads, as Buffalo owns a 33-6-2 record after scoring the game's opening goal.
"Development isn't a straight line. It's bumpy. But people want to look at it and see at 18 when you got drafted and see at 24 when you're a star in the league and think it was this perfect straight line," Appert said of various players, though he could have easily been referencing the Sabres as a unit.
"Day-to-day, it's usually bumpy, and there's usually big dips too. But the best ones take the failure and adversity of the dips and take it as information to improve. And then grow from that, grow from what they're going through. We have a lot of guys who have done that and maybe aren't getting much credit publicly. Their game is still developing at a high rate in their mid-20s."
The Sabres may be a wagon, but they're riding high shooting and save percentages. Some of it appears sustainable; some doesn't. The roster is littered with players who haven't played a shift in the playoffs: Thompson, Benson, Doan, and three of the top four defensemen, among others. But it also has three Cup winners in Byram, Luke Schenn, and Tanner Pearson, plus another three with extensive experience. The Eastern Conference remains unsettled, with a few first-round matchup scenarios in play for Buffalo.
There's a lot of uncertainty about how this magical Sabres season will end. But the drought is over, done, in the past. Fans can rejoice for once.
The players, meanwhile, have tangible evidence. Proof that something's changed.
"We were at a low in the season," Thompson said of early December. "Everyone in the room looked in the mirror, said, 'We got to dig ourselves out of this hole.' It starts with each guy just looking at what they could do better. Everyone in here took that to heart and wanted to turn this ship around."
John Matisz is theScore's senior NHL writer. Follow John on Twitter/X (@MatiszJohn) or contact him via email ([email protected]).