The Buffalo Sabres rebounded from an ugly start to get back into the wild-card logjam. "Our compete has been through the roof, honestly, since Day 1."
Heading into the season, there wasn't a lot of optimism about the Buffalo Sabres.
The team hasn't made the playoffs in more than a decade and happened to play in an Atlantic Division with a pretty well-established top end of Florida, Tampa Bay and Toronto.
After dropping their first three games of the campaign – and scoring just two total goals in the process – the Sabres once again were facing a bleak future. But a funny thing happened after that desultory first week: Buffalo started winning.
They hung eight goals on the Ottawa Senators, then shut out the defending champs from Florida and beat a hot Red Wings squad. The Sabres recently took three out of four points in a home-and-home against the Maple Leafs, and all of a sudden, things aren't looking so bleak.
"Every point matters," said right winger Alex Tuch after the OT loss to Toronto. "We would have liked to get two of them, obviously. Game 1 on the road in Toronto is big, something to build off. We could have beared down in some areas and got that second point, but I'm proud of our group."
Buffalo headed into Tuesday night's clash with Columbus with a .500 points percentage, putting them in an Eastern Conference logjam for a wild-card spot. Hope seems to be a real thing right now, and even if Buffalo fans are gun-shy (we all know they've been hurt before), the players are buying in.
"Every single game we've played this season, we've been right there," said center Tage Thompson. "It's been a one-goal, two-goal game all the way to the end. Sometimes it just comes down to bad puck luck, sometimes it's self-inflicted with our puck decisions. We've seen both sides of that, but if we continue to limit the puck errors on our end, we're going to start to see us getting more points moving forward. We've been really difficult to play against."
Tuch Response To Hit An Example Of Sabres Team Building
The ‘glass is half full’ point of view for the Buffalo Sabres towards the weekend back-to-back with the arch-rival Toronto Maple Leafs is that they earned three of a possible four points and kept their momentum going in a positive direction. The ‘glass is half empty’ perspective is that the Sabres held a 3-2 lead deep into the third period before surrendering the tying goal to the Leafs Dakota Joshua, and after getting the lion’s share of the scoring chances in overtime, lose 4-3 on John Tavares breakaway goal.
So what's the difference between this year's start and last season, when the Sabres finished third-last in the conference.
"Our compete has been through the roof, honestly, since Day 1," Tuch said. "Scoring wasn't there the first couple of games, but we're starting to find our scoring touch here. Everyone is chipping in, everyone is producing. It's been good to see and the compete level has been a lot higher (than last year), especially to start the season."
The power play has also been a boon. After finishing 24th in the league last year, the Sabres are now a top-10 outfit with the man advantage and trending up: keep in mind their offensive power outage in the first three games of the campaign.
"We have a shot mentality, and we're getting to the blue paint," Thompson said. "When we try to slow things down and overcomplicate things, waiting for a perfect look, that's when we get ourselves into trouble. When we keep it simple and shoot and get to the net is when we get their PK spinning a bit, and that's when we've had success."
There is still a lot of season to go, and the Sabres will have to prove to opponents and their own fans that this squad has what it takes to make a post-season push. But with Tampa Bay, Toronto and Florida off to mediocre starts, the Atlantic is looking topsy-turvy, and that could mean an opening for a team like the Sabres.
Hope can be a flimsy thing, but it's better to have some of it than none of it if you're Buffalo right now. And it's certainly a better feeling than the Sabres had at the end of last season.
For action-packed issues, access to the entire magazine archive and a free issue, subscribe to The Hockey News at THN.com/free. Get the latest news and trending stories by subscribing to our newsletter here. And share your thoughts by commenting below the article on THN.com or creating your own post in our community forum.