Atlantic Division champion Sabres know they aren’t surprising anyone this season

For much of Rob Ray’s on-ice tenure with the Buffalo Sabres, postseason hockey was practically a rite of spring in western New York. Across his 14 seasons there, playing with the likes of Dominik Hasek and Pat LaFontaine, Ray’s team reached the playoffs 11 times, most memorably getting within two wins of winning its first Stanley Cup in 1999.

The new millennium hasn’t been as kind to the 56-year-old franchise. Since Ray was traded to the Ottawa Senators in 2003, the Sabres have only reached the playoffs on five occasions. And until the current iteration took the Montreal Canadiens to seven games in their second-round series last May, the team had gone a National Hockey League-record 14 seasons between playoff appearances.

But the Sabres returned to their winning ways in style. They clinched their first division title in 16 years, elbowing their way back to relevance in a Buffalo sports scene that had been dominated by a noisy neighbour and its table-crashing fans in recent years.

“Fortunately for the fans there, you’ve got two teams that are playing well and the Bills have for the last couple of years, they’ve kind of raised the excitement level in town,” said Ray, still the team’s penalty-minute leader with 3,189 minutes. “Then as a little brother, you might not want to let them have all the attention.”

Speaking before Buffalo met the Toronto Maple Leafs on Thursday night, Ray, who has worked as the Sabres analyst for MSG Networks since he retired after the 2004 season, talks of the new energy and confidence around the team these days.

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From captain Rasmus Dahlin to winger Jack Quinn on down, many of the players got their first taste of playoff hockey – which included the team’s first series win in 19 years – and their development has been fast-tracked as a result.

One corollary to that, of course, is that Ray and the other alumni no longer need to describe to the players what Buffalo is like during a playoff run; they’ve now all lived through the craziness of a city that rolled out the blue carpet for its hockey heroes.

“They’re kind of looking at you with disbelief until they really got a piece to feel it and see it themselves,” he said. “Now they know what it’s going to be like and would be like when they’re doing well. And I think it’s more motivation.”

One of the maxims of sports is that winning something once is hard enough, but defending a division title, as in Buffalo’s case, is going to be even harder. The Sabres are going to see everyone’s best effort, particularly within a tight division like the Atlantic, which supplied five of the Eastern Conference’s eight teams last spring.

Buffalo surprised the hockey world last season, surging to a 32-6-2 run across 40 games following the firing of general manager Kevyn Adams – the fourth-most wins by any team over a 40-game span in NHL history. Consequently, catching teams off guard is going to be a whole lot harder this season.

“There were moments early on in our streak where teams might underestimate us a little bit, and we made them pay for that, and now you’re not going to get that anymore,” said winger Josh Doan. “But at the same time, we know that that the answer is always in this room right now, and we’re confident in winning games and winning big games.”

In his second tour of duty behind the Buffalo bench, Lindy Ruff may in many ways be the perfect complement to this young, effervescent squad. He brings unparalleled market experience, having also been behind the bench in 1999 when the Sabres reached the Cup final, famously being sunk by Brett Hull’s skate-in-the-crease overtime goal.

Having coached 1,945 games – third in league history behind Scotty Bowman and Paul Maurice – Ruff, who returned in 2024 after 11 years away, is a bridge between Buffalo’s previous era of on-ice success and the present.

Ruff went into Thursday’s game looking for NHL win No. 954, and isn’t about to let his team coast on its achievements of six months ago. Last year’s work earned him a nomination for the Jack Adams Award as well as a two-year extension.

“Well, last year’s last year,” he said. “I think every team thinks they’re improved or they’re better. You can’t live off of that.”

It’s a mantra that has seemingly been infused into the players at the start of this new season. Although the Sabres brought a 3-3-1 record into Toronto, they’ve been missing a few players. Stalwarts such as Bowen Byram and Alex Tuch were traded away, while others like Dahlin, Jason Tucker and Alex Lyon have been injured in the early going. Still, this group knows that its success will ultimately be defined by hard work.

“I think we want to look at last year, and it was a huge step for us, realizing how good we were, but also we had to work towards that,” Quinn said. “We’re not just going to pick up there. So just trying to get better every day and get our game back to a spot we know it can be because of last year.”

With an average age of 26.9 – the sixth-youngest in the NHL, according to the Puckpedia website – the Sabres would seem to have time on their side. But that also throws up the possibility of a generational divide between the players and Ruff, who, at 66, is the second-oldest coach in the NHL, behind only 68-year-old Joel Quenneville.

Ray, who also played for Ruff, feels that the coach has done a good job relating to today’s players, with both sides fully committed to producing something special and lasting for the city of Buffalo.

“He makes his home there. He’s a proud Buffalonian as well,” Ray said. “He’s been there for a million years, so he feels the pressure of having his team to where it needs to be to give the people what they want, too.”