The Buffalo Sabres have been one of the big surprises of the 2025-26 National Hockey League campaign, currently tied with the Tampa Bay Lightning for top spot in the Atlantic Division with 20 games left in their regular-season.
They've won five games in a row, allowed just eight goals in that span, and are on the verge of breaking the longest postseason drought in North American professional sports.
And they got even better ahead of the NHL Trade Deadline, nearly acquiring Colton Parayko but instead adding depth in the form of Logan Stanley and Luke Schenn from the Winnipeg Jets.
“Buffalo is a great city,” general manager Jarmo Kekalainen said, per NHL.com's Derek Van Diest. “We have a great hockey team that’s winning games. A fun atmosphere. An electric building. Our players are loving it here. The Buffalo Sabres deserve a lot of respect right now.”
The new GM added: “Our guys compete, and I think that’s the thing that I give this group and coaching staff a lot of credit for. I think everybody knows we have a lot of skill, but our guys compete and we’ve shown a lot of character throughout the season, and that’s part of the growth process, too, and I think that’s the greatest part of the success here in the last few months that I’ve seen. We’ve really shown a lot of character.”
KeyBank Center going to be rocking this spring
Barring an epic collapse, playoff hockey will be returning to Western New York for the first time since the 2010-11 season — and the KeyBank Center is going to be electric when that time comes.
The Sabres are flush with skill, led by Tage Thompson and Rasmus Dahlin but also featuring a plethora of players having career seasons.
Now, they've brought in the grit, adding Stanley (6-foot-7, 231 pounds) and Schenn (6-foot-2, 225 pounds) to a blue line that already features “Mattias Samuelsson (the No. 32 pick in the 2018 draft), Bowen Byram (the No. 4 pick by the Colorado Avalanche in the 2019 NHL Draft) and Owen Power (the No. 1 pick in the 2021 NHL Draft),” per Van Diest.
“The one thing that I’ve noticed since we’ve had some success is that teams try to test us a little bit,” Kekalainen explained. “They’ve been trying to push us around, and I think we added some elements that that’s not going to happen so easily anymore.”
In net, Alex Lyon and Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen have both been terrific since the Olympic break, providing timely saves and giving their team a chance to win on any given night.
Add it all together and you have a Buffalo team that is surging, sitting 37-19-6 and oozing confidence ahead of a visit from the Nashville Predators on Saturday afternoon.
It looks like, after a decade and a half, the dark days are past in Western New York. And the roster as currently constructed is built to do more than just get into the playoffs — it's built to make noise when that time comes.
