Inside Sabres' anticlimactic clinch day: A drought ended, followed by alarming loss

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He was breaking down video and then, because it was an 80-degree day in D.C., he decided to take a walk. “Business as usual,” Ruff said with a smile while speaking just outside the visitor’s locker room at Capital One Arena. Ruff only found out the Sabres had clinched when someone he declined to name sent him a simple text. That “X” is now sitting next to the Sabres on the league’s standings page to represent the fact that they have clinched a spot in the Stanley Cup playoffs and ended a 14-year postseason drought that was the longest in NHL history. When Ruff came back for a second stint as the Sabres’ coach before the 2024-25 season, he did so because he wanted to be part of bringing playoff hockey back to Buffalo. The 2024-25 season was one of the toughest of Ruff’s career, with the team struggling to get to 79 points. This season, the Sabres were in last place in the Eastern Conference in mid-December before putting together the best 40-game stretch the NHL has seen since the 1995-96 season. “The guys have worked so hard to get to this point,” Ruff said. “I mentioned yesterday, four months, every month has been pretty darn consistent. We play a good brand of hockey and we got rewarded for how hard we played. First and foremost, I’m so happy for Terry and Kim and the whole Pegula family, our fans, all the people who work in the building. I’m stoked.” A healthy crowd of Sabres fans in D.C. got an audible, “Let’s go, Buffalo!” chant started early in the game, but the buzz of the playoff clinch wore off quickly. In the first six minutes of the game, the Sabres were down 3-0 due to some lackadaisical coverage in the defensive zone. First, Jakob Chychrun was wide open to blast home a rebound. Then Dylan Strome was left uncovered in front of the net for a tap in. And then Connor McMichael was by himself at the side of the net to tap in a puck that banked off the end wall. With 14:08 left in the first period, Ruff pulled Alex Lyon and called a timeout to try to snap his team out of it. The Sabres did claw back, scoring a pair of goals to make it 3-2 at the end of the first period. But the Capitals widened the gap again in the second period. After Josh Doan and Ryan McLeod failed to connect on a two-on-one, Aliaksei Protas went the other way and scored on the rush. In the third, the Sabres allowed two more goals, including a short-handed goal from Tom Wilson. The game ended 6-2 and marked Buffalo’s second straight loss and fifth loss in the last seven games. The postgame locker room could have been a celebration scene. When the Sabres clinched a playoff spot this afternoon, some of them were probably still waking up from their pregame naps. A win would have allowed them to soak in the accomplishment and enjoy it for a night. Instead, the postgame scene around Buffalo’s locker room was a quiet, frustrated one. Rasmus Dahlin said it was difficult to answer questions about clinching, but he made a point to say how happy he was for the people of Buffalo. But he wasn’t in much of a mood for reflecting on what the Sabres have done, given the way the last few games have gone. With a chance to clinch against the Senators on Thursday night, the Sabres lost 4-1. Now, after clinching while still in street clothes, the Sabres laid another egg. “(Clinching) is not something you look over by any means,” Sabres forward Tage Thompson said. “It’s obviously a huge accomplishment. That’s a goal we’ve had for a long time and especially where we were at the beginning of the season, what we’ve done to get ourselves into this spot is great. But also at the end of the day, that’s not the end goal. You can’t be comfortable with that and happy with that. It’s not good enough to just get in. There’s other teams that are doing that every year. It’s not that special. We want to do something special. And if we’re playing like that, we’re not going to.” The Sabres haven’t been the same team in the last seven games, going 2-3-2 during that stretch. After allowing one goal in three games prior to this stretch, the Sabres have now allowed 30 goals in the last seven games. On Saturday, the defensive shortcomings weren’t isolated to one or two players. Thompson, Bowen Byram, Jack Quinn, Josh Doan, Ryan McLeod and Zach Metsa were all on the ice for three goals against in this game. Logan Stanley, Jason Zucker, Owen Power and Zach Benson were out there for two goals against each. Suddenly, one of the strengths of the Sabres’ game has turned into a weakness. And after four months of getting the best goaltending in the NHL, the Sabres haven’t been bailed out by their goalies quite as often. “You can’t defend as poorly as we did those first couple of goals,” Ruff said. “We left two guys wide open. Coverage wasn’t good and it ends up in the back of the net. We’ve taken a lot of pride. Our defensive play has been a big reason why we got to where we got. We can’t take that for granted.” Sabres fans have spent a lot of years wondering and imagining what it would be like when the playoff drought finally ended. It could have happened with a win at home and turned into an arena-wide celebration, but that wasn’t in the cards. It could have happened on Thursday night with a win in a rival building. Dan Dunleavy could have had the perfect call to meet the moment and give fans watching a lifetime memory. What actually happened felt anticlimactic by comparison. The Sabres clinched, but did so thanks to another team. And then fans only got to revel in it for a few hours before the Capitals put a damper on things. “A lot of the noise right now with us making playoffs and clinching is maybe, I don’t want to say getting to our heads a little bit, but we definitely aren’t as intense as we need to be right now,” Thompson said. If it’s intensity the Sabres need more of, they shouldn’t have any trouble finding it on Monday. They’ll return home to get in front of the home crowd for the first time since ending the drought. And they’ll be playing the Tampa Bay Lightning, a team they beat 8-7 in an epic, fight-filled slugfest a few weeks ago. “They’re a hell of a team,” Tuch said. “If we play like that tonight, they’re going to run us over and run us out of our own building. Hopefully getting back to the KeyBank Center gives us a little bit of a jolt that we need. We’re going to come out with a lot of passion and a lot of energy and try to take it to them.” The Sabres have five games left in the regular season before the playoffs begin. That’s time for them to shake this late-season funk. But the consequences of the last two weeks are already setting in. The Lightning have a two-point lead on the Sabres in the division with a game in hand. And the Canadiens are now tied with the Sabres at 100 points and also have a game in hand. After holding first place in the Atlantic for a few weeks, the Sabres are now in third, which would mean losing home-ice advantage in the first round of the playoffs. Back when the Sabres were struggling early in the season, making it to the playoffs would have been cause for celebration on its own. Along the way, though, the Sabres became a team capable of doing more than just getting in. The Eastern Conference looks wide open, and the Sabres have five games to get themselves ready to take advantage of that. “Once you reach that goal, the standard has changed for us,” Thompson said. “That’s no longer the standard, just making it. We’ve got to move on from this trip and get our game back.” Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms Matthew Fairburn is a staff writer for The Athletic covering the Buffalo Sabres. A graduate of the University of Missouri, he previously covered the New England Patriots and Buffalo Bills for The Athletic. Prior to The Athletic, he also covered the Bills for Syracuse.com. Follow Matthew on Twitter @MatthewFairburn