Buffalo Sabres

A sabre, two Knox brothers and no Stanley Cup

The franchise was awarded in 1970, the same expansion round that produced the Vancouver Canucks, to a group led by Seymour H. Knox III, Northrup Knox and Robert O. Swados. The name came from Knox's own reasoning that a sabre was a weapon carried by a leader and worked on both attack and defence. Fifty-six seasons later the club has still never won the Stanley Cup.

It has come close twice, and both attempts are remembered for something other than hockey. In 1975 Buffalo lost the final to the Philadelphia Flyers in six games, in a series whose third game was played through fog thick enough that play had to be stopped repeatedly, and during which the centre Jim Lorentz killed a bat with his stick. In 1999 the Sabres lost in six to the Dallas Stars, the series ending on a triple-overtime goal by Brett Hull scored with his skate in the crease, which under the rule as written should have disallowed it. In Buffalo it is still referred to as the no-goal.

The best-remembered team never reached either final. The forward line of Gilbert Perreault, Rick Martin and René Robert played together from 1972 to 1979, and all three have their numbers hanging in the rafters — 11, 7 and 14 — with a statue of the trio installed outside the arena in 2012. The club moved out of Buffalo Memorial Auditorium in 1996 into the building now called KeyBank Center, and has been owned by Terry Pegula since February 2011, when he bought it for $189 million.

The drought, and what it was measured against

Pegula's purchase coincided almost exactly with the start of the worst run in the modern league. Buffalo last made the playoffs in 2010-11, losing a first round to Philadelphia, and then missed fourteen consecutive seasons — the longest postseason absence in NHL history. Through those fourteen years the team never finished better than nineteenth in the league. By the time it ended, the only longer active drought in the major North American leagues belonged to the New York Jets, at fifteen seasons.

The coach behind the bench for that 2011 appearance was Lindy Ruff. He was sacked in 2013, coached Dallas and the New York Islanders' bench and then the New Jersey Devils, and returned to Buffalo for a second stint. He is the only person who has been in the room for both ends of the drought.

2025-26: last in the conference in December, Atlantic champions in April

The season that broke it did not begin well. As late as December the Sabres sat bottom of the Eastern Conference. On 15 December 2025 the club dismissed general manager Kevyn Adams and installed Jarmo Kekäläinen, formerly of Columbus. What followed was a ten-game winning streak and a 32-8-4 run that was the best record in the league over that stretch.

Buffalo clinched its playoff place on 4 April 2026, with six games still to play, and did it without being on the ice: the berth was mathematically secured when the New York Rangers beat the Detroit Red Wings in regulation. The Sabres themselves lost 6-2 in Washington that night. They finished 50-23-9 for 109 points, first in the Atlantic Division and second in the Eastern Conference — their first hundred-point season and first division title since 2009-10.

Tage Thompson led the scoring with 40 goals and 41 assists for 81 points, captain Rasmus Dahlin had 74, and the right wing Alex Tuch 66, with 33 goals. Thompson, Dahlin and Tuch were the three fan-voted finalists for the club's Rick Martin Memorial Award, announced on Fan Appreciation Night on 15 April.

Boston in six, Montreal in seven

The first round, against Boston between 19 April and 1 May, went Buffalo's way in six games. The second round did not. Montreal took it in seven, finishing at KeyBank Center on 18 May when Alex Newhook took a cross-ice pass from Alexandre Carrier and beat Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen low on the glove side 11:22 into overtime. Jordan Greenway and Dahlin had scored for Buffalo; Phillip Danault and Zachary Bolduc scored in the first period for Montreal, which went on to the conference final against Carolina.

Home ice was the problem. Across both rounds the Sabres went 2-5 at KeyBank Center, to the point that the team checked into a hotel before Game 7 to manufacture the feeling of a road trip, and Ruff joked publicly about moving the deciding game to the Bell Centre. Tuch, who had seven points against Boston, managed none in seven games against Montreal despite leading the team with 26 shots. The goaltending was split and unreliable: Alex Lyon finished the postseason at.847, Luukkonen at.897.

Ruff afterwards: "It hurts. I told the team it hurts. That pain will go away, but I won't let this one game define the season we had." He was given a two-year extension on 20 May, two days later.

The summer that split the room

Kekäläinen's first full offseason took the roster apart more than most expected of a division winner. Tuch, who grew up in Baldwinsville as a Sabres fan and spent five seasons in Buffalo, was sign-and-traded to Washington on 25 June 2026 — an eight-year, $84 million deal with the Capitals, with Buffalo receiving David Kampf's rights and a 2027 third-round pick. Kekäläinen said the club had wanted to keep him and pointed at cap room, including the $6.5 million still carried from the Jeff Skinner buyout.

The defenceman Bowen Byram and Greenway went to Chicago for the fourth overall pick and Louis Crevier, after Kekäläinen said Byram would not negotiate an extension. Michael Kesselring was traded to San Jose and the goaltender Devon Levi to Edmonton for a third-round pick. Coming the other way or staying put: Olen Zellweger on three years at $3.1 million a season, Peyton Krebs on a four-year extension, Beck Malenstyn on six years at $17.5 million, and Crevier on a four-year extension signed this autumn.

The reaction was not kind. Dom Luszczyszyn of The Athletic rated it the worst offseason in the league by his Net Rating model, while allowing that internal improvement from Buffalo's young forwards could cover the losses. The counter-argument made elsewhere is that the Sabres now carry no badly damaging contracts into a rising salary cap.

Two games into 2026-27

The league's new 84-game schedule began for Buffalo on 1 October 2026 in Columbus, a 6-3 loss in which Jack Quinn and Konsta Helenius scored and Matthew Knies had two goals and an assist in his Blue Jackets debut. The home opener followed on Saturday 3 October: the Atlantic Division banner went up before the game, and the Sabres came from two goals down to beat Chicago 4-3 in front of a sold-out house.

The winner belonged to Jiri Kulich, who snapped a shot short side past Spencer Knight at 13:20 of the third during four-on-four play. It was his first goal since 24 October 2025; he had missed close to a full year with a blood clot. "That was probably the main thing I was dreaming about the whole year," he said afterwards. Thompson had a goal and an assist, Dahlin and Quinn scored, Luukkonen made 12 saves, and Zellweger made his Buffalo debut paired with Owen Power. The record stands at 1-1-0, with Minnesota next at home on 6 October and the regular season running to 10 April 2027.

Off the ice the recovery is measurable. The club announced on 26 August 2026 that season tickets for 2026-27 had sold out, with a waiting list opened at a $100 deposit. Average attendance last season was 17,853, roughly two thousand a game up on 2024-25 and the highest since 2019-20, and the final 24 dates including the playoffs were sellouts.