Better luck next year: Can the Buffalo Sabres do it again?

Was the 2025-26 season a sign of real improvement? A short-term mirage? What is next for the Buffalo Sabres?

Welcome back to Better Luck Next Year, a series that will focus on each team as they get eliminated from Stanley Cup Playoff contention and the Stanley Cup Playoffs. What went wrong, why it went wrong, what (if anything) went right, and what is next. We continue today with the Buffalo Sabres.

On Dec. 8, 29 games into the 2025-26 season, the Buffalo Sabres lost an ugly 7-4 game to the Calgary Flames to drop their record to 11-14-4.

They had the worst record in the Eastern Conference and looked to be destined to extend their already-NHL record playoff drought to a 15th season.

Fans were chanting to fire everybody.

The general manager had already been fired.

Things were about as bleak as they could have possibly been for the NHL’s most consistently incompetent franchise.

And then, without anything really changing on the roster or behind the bench … everything changed.

They started winning. Then they kept winning. Everything started to come into place, and from Dec. 9 until the end of the regular season, no team in the NHL had a better record than the Buffalo Sabres. They went from last place in the Eastern Conference, up to the top spot in the Atlantic Division and the second-best record in the entire Eastern Conference. It was not only their first playoff appearance since 2010-11, it was their best overall record since 2006-07. It was then followed by a first-round playoff win over the Boston Bruins, and then taking the Montreal Canadiens all the way to overtime of Game 7 in the second-round.

They were that close to the Eastern Conference Final.

A lot of things went right over the final four months of the regular season, as well as the playoffs.

• Tage Thompson had a monster year offensively and scored 40 goals for the second year in a row

• Rasmus Dahlin played like a Norris Trophy winner on defense, even if he didn’t actually win it (he was a finalist and finished third in the voting).

• Alex Tuch topped the 30-goal mark for the third time in four years.

• Josh Doan emerged as an outstanding player, and made Buffalo the current winner of the JJ Peterka trade.

• Zach Benson took a massive step forward and established himself as one of the NHL’s biggest pests, and more importantly, one of its most effective.

• They received well-above average goaltending with all of Alex Lyon, Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen and Colten Ellis finishing with save percentages of .906 or better (significantly above the league average), while the trio combined to save 25 goals above expected. It was a gigantic improvement from the year before. A season-changing, franchise-altering improvement.

Everything just came together.

Now the question is whether or not it was real progress and a massive step forward for the organization, or if it was just a few months long blip with a regression set to follow this season.

There IS a lot of individual talent here, and especially young talent. That is promising, and something that should be seen as an encouraging sign.

But the potential red flags are also real. At least in the short-term.

Let’s start with the fact the offseason has, to this point, seen them lose production from last year’s team without actually replacing it in the short-term. That doesn’t necessarily mean the moves themselves were bad.

Trading Bowen Byram for the No. 4 and 45 overall picks, as well as defenseman Louis Crevier, and then trading the No. 45 pick for Olen Zellweger, was good value. Especially since it means they did not have to pay Byram $12 million a year for six years. Zellweger is Byram-lite, and they used the No. 4 pick to select a potential top-pairing defenseman for the future in Daxon Rudolph.

Again: Sensible stuff. Potentially good long-term moves. Good value. But does it make them better this season?

Probably not.

Maybe Washington comes to regret paying Tuch over $10 million per season after a few years. Maybe that contract ages like milk. It certainly gives Buffalo some additional salary cap flexibility that still exists this offseason, and in the future.

But that is still a 30-goal scorer walking away with nobody coming in to replace it.

Those are a couple of potential holes on the roster that did not exist there a year ago.

That is a potential problem.

There is also the reality that a lot of their turnaround was driven by a huge jump in the team’s goaltending production.

When it came to out-chancing their opponents and controlling the pace of play during 5-on-5 play, Buffalo was largely an average team. Their 49.9 percent expected goal share was 17th in the NHL for the season. They allowed 2.71 expected goals per 60 minutes, a number that placed them 18th in the NHL.

But their 5-on-5 save percentage? Eighth best in the NHL.

All-situations save percentage? Third best in the NHL.

That level of goaltending masks a LOT, and it changes the math on everything for a team.

Even if you just look at their season as it relates to everything after Dec. 9, these same things are in place. From Dec. 9 onward their expected goal share of 48.7 percent was actually worse than their full season number, and placed them 21st in the NHL. They allowed 2.8 expected goals, which was also down to 21st in the NHL.

But their 5-on-5 goaltending during that stretch? Literally No. 1 in the entire NHL.

Their all-situations goaltending during that stretch? Literally No. 1 in the entire NHL.

When you’re getting the best goaltending in the NHL for any extended period of time, you’re automatically putting yourself in a position to have a chance. It doesn’t take much after that to stack wins.

Just for perspective, the Sabres’ all-situations save percentage during the 2024-25 season was 31st in the NHL. Their 5-on-5 save percentage was 28th. It was a massive, massive swing for the position (we will get to the personnel behind that in a minute).

Given all of that, a lot of the Sabres chances for this season are going to come down to how much internal growth they get from the young players already on the roster, and whether or not the goaltending is going to even come close to duplicating what it did a year ago.

Let’s talk a little more about that, as well as everything that went right, and wrong, for the 2025-26 Sabres.

What went right