'More desperation': Sabres liking this whole Stanley Cup Playoffs thing

BUFFALO, N.Y. — From the pre-game party outside the building to the vibration caused inside KeyBank Center by a thrilling Buffalo Sabres comeback in Game 1, the Sunday night that playoff hockey returned to Western New York sort of felt like a fever dream.

Lost in the whirlwind, though, was the fact no fewer than 11 Sabres saw their career playoff games odometer engage, rolling over from zero to one. Included among the players getting their first — and long-awaited — exposure to post-season action were two-goal man Tage Thompson and the guy who put Buffalo up for good with a late-game snipe, defenceman Mattias Samuelsson.

The fact those three goals — which turned a 2-0 Boston Bruins advantage into a 3-2 Sabres lead that ended as a 4-3 victory — came just 4:34 apart, with fewer than eight minutes to go in the third period, meant everybody getting their first taste of playoff action received quite a mouthful.

“I told them right after the game, ‘You want experience, you’ve got it now,’” Sabres coach Lindy Ruff said with a chuckle in the immediate aftermath of the series-opening contest. “If you’re going to say 'This was my first playoff game,' you’ve got a great story to tell.”

Samuelsson could surely spin a yarn about lighting up a building by scoring the go-ahead goal in his first post-season match. What might fall by the wayside in any retelling of the events is that he also dished out nine hits — more than everybody in the game, except his teammate Alex Tuch — and played 22:20, third of any Sabre. At six-foot-four and 229 pounds, it’s no surprise Samuelsson’s style is perfectly suited for the post-season.

“I think we learned a lot, just about the highs and lows in games and series,” he said after Game 1. “I think that was a good learning lesson for us. Just take that into Game 2. There are going to be times you’re down, guys are going to make mistakes. It’s just about stepping up when you need to and making the right play when you can.” 

Thompson, of course, has played in huge international games before, having scored the overtime winner for Team USA in the gold-medal game at the 2025 World Championship and being part of the U.S. club that won Olympic gold two months ago in Italy. Those games aren’t a perfect stand-in for everything NHL playoff hockey brings, but certainly helped prepare Thompson for the highest-stakes club hockey he’s ever played.

“Every game means so much, every shift means so much,” he said after Game 1. “There’s just way more desperation. You never know what’s going to be a turning point in a series and in a game. For us, as a group, we just want to make sure we’re focused on a shift at a time, not looking too far down the road and not looking in the rearview.” 

Speaking on Monday, with the benefit of a few hours to digest everything that happened, Sabres winger Jack Quinn — who drew a huge assist on Samuelsson’s goal — said there’s a higher degree of comfort now that so many guys got that first big one out of the way,

“It’s great,” he said of collectively getting their skates wet. “I think we can all settle down a little. We know what to expect, we know what the energy is going to be like, the emotion. I think it’s a good (thing).”

Tuch — who’s at the opposite end of the experience spectrum than so many of his mates, having played in the Stanley Cup Final with the Vegas Golden Knights — said that while plenty of guys gained valuable insight into what the game is all about this time of year, he had faith his teammates would be just fine.

“It just removes uncertainty from (the equation),” he said of getting that first playoff notch on your belt. “It gives them that one game under their belt where (you’re thinking) OK, I know what to expect, I know what it’s going to take going forward.

“We had guys rise to the occasion. I think they knew the stakes, obviously. They watched playoff hockey their entire life. I had high expectations for all the guys playing in their first playoff hockey game.”

While the Sabres certainly made tangible gains with respect to experience, they’re still searching for answers when it comes to a struggling power play. Buffalo has now failed to connect on its past 26 man advantages after going 0-for-4 in Game 1. Despite the lack of results, Ruff has no intention of exploding his team’s approach.

“Some of the best power plays have been together for a long time, the players have been together for a long time,” he said Sunday night. “You can’t just start changing everything. There’s a lot of little areas (in our) power play. The first power play was really good. I thought, after that, we regressed a little bit. But we’re not going to change everything. We’ve got to execute at a higher level, we’ve got to break their pressure and understand where that’s going to be, like we did on the first power play. And sometimes you just have to flat out win more battles.”

That’s just another thing everyone on the Sabres now understands heading into Game 2.