Surging Sabres shed years of trade-deadline dread with playoffs in sight

BUFFALO — If there’s any doubt trade-deadline week has a different vibe in Buffalo this time out, just ask Rasmus Dahlin what it’s like to be the captain of a club that’s shown its general manager it’s worthy of investment.

“Something new to me,” Dahlin said with a look of unmistakable happiness on his face after practice on Monday.

Deadline week has been a time of dread in Buffalo for many years, as season after season the squad found itself either barely in the post-season chase or completely out of it by the stretch run.

This Sabres outfit, though, has the best points percentage in the league (.806) since Dec. 9. Overall, the Sabres have the fifth-best points percentage in the Eastern Conference (.633) and a nine-point cushion on a playoff spot. And if Western New Yorkers had any fear they’d be waking up from a dream after the three-week Olympic hiatus, the Sabres handed them a warm blanket with three straight road wins. The final of those contests was a 6-2 waxing of the team with the second-best record since Dec. 9, the high-powered Tampa Bay Lightning.

Even the most hardened Sabres fan had to be heartened by that one. Olympic champion Tage Thompson sure was.

“We’ve been taking it one game at a time, but I think Saturday made a statement about us as a group,” Thompson said. “From where we were at the start of the year to now, as we started to get hot, talking about making the playoffs and now I think we’ve proven that not only can we make the playoffs, we can be a real team. I don’t want to get too far ahead of ourselves, but everyone in that locker room believes we’re a dangerous team.”

So here the Sabres sit, poised to end a 14-year post-season drought, feeling fantastic about what they’ve got and understanding there could be more coming.

Sure, there’s some uncertainty around pending UFA Alex Tuch, but the overwhelming sense is it would be worth keeping the local guy even if it’s as an own-rental before he walks in the summer. Sabres GM Jarmo Kekalainen has done that before, dating back to a 2018-19 season in Columbus where — guiding a team that had shown far less promise than this Sabres one — he hung onto to pending UFAs Sergei Bobrovsky and Artemi Panarin, who only left Ohio after helping the team win its first playoff series in franchise history.

Exactly how Kekalainen — who’s only been the GM in Buffalo since mid-December — will operate in the coming days isn’t exactly known. Even the players themselves recognize that part of NHL life goes beyond their job description.

“We’ll see what happens, I have no idea,” Dahlin said. “The team is doing well right now, we just have to keep (it up). That’s Jarmo’s job to make those decisions.”

Even when a team is surging, deadline week can be stressful. Players know anything can be in play and even if a club is winning, making a buy could still involve subtracting a contributing member of the dressing room.

That said, there’s very clearly a different mandate around this Sabres club than past iterations and you don’t have to be a long-time member of the team to sense it. 

“(Dahlin) and a couple other guys have been a part of groups where you don’t know who is going to be gone the next week,” said first-year Sabre Josh Doan. “No one could be gone or you could lose five guys. I’ve been on teams in the past where deadlines aren’t a very comfortable part of year and you don’t want to be in that position. You don’t want to put yourself or your buddies in that position. We’ve done an unbelievable job of putting ourselves in a spot where if they choose to add, we’re a team that could add. We obviously have a very special group here, so anything they do, we’re excited for and we trust in them. But it is nice to be on the side of things where you’re looking to add, not get rid of (players).”

It hasn’t taken Doan — who was acquired in the off-season from Utah and inked a seven-year extension with the Sabres in late January — long to get the lay of the land in Buffalo. The heartache — and worse, apathy — can hang around town like a heavy fog.

For some, it’s hard to believe sun beams could actually be break through. 

“(One of the things) you’ve heard this year is it’s hard for people to jump back on the bandwagon because of the last couple years and how many times they’ve been hurt,” Doan said.

“I think that was big for us coming out of the break, showing we’re still a legit team and the games leading into the break weren’t just a fluke; we’re here to compete and we’re going to give it our all to break this drought and go on a little bit of a run in the playoffs. Once you get in, you never know what can happen. Our goal is to get there, then wreak a little bit of havoc. But (also) get the fans back to having faith in this organization again jumping on the bandwagon fully and not just dipping their toes in the water. It’s been awesome seeing flags and merchandise around the city again. It’s one of those things where we’re committed to this city and we’re hoping they can get fully commit to us.”

The atmosphere will certainly be off the charts on Tuesday night, when Thompson will be cheered for his gold medal with Team USA ahead of Buffalo’s game against the Vegas Golden Knights. Heck, even Jack Eichel — who had a messy divorce from Buffalo nearly five years ago — can appreciate the positivity around the team right now.

“It was only a matter of time,” the Golden Knights centre, who played with Thompson on Team USA, said on Tuesday morning. “There are so many great players in the organization. You go through some hard years and it can make you better as a group. You see some of the guys who have been here for a while and obviously the two who come to mind for me are (Thompson and Dahlin) and what they’ve meant to the organization. It’s really good to see for those guys. I think about all the other people in the organization, the people who are behind the scenes who have been doing an unbelievable job of representing the (team) for a long time.”

Perhaps the electricity that’s expected when Thompson and presumably Eichel and Noah Hanifin are honoured before Tuesday’s game will be a window to what the Sabres can expect down the stretch run and, gulp, into the post-season.

“Over my time here we’ve had spurts here where we’ve had crowds like that, where the atmosphere has been outrageous and it’s something you dream about playing in front of every night,” Thompson said.

“I think we’ve gotten to the point now where hopefully they will be there every night like that. Obviously we have to continue to keep winning, but I think that’s something that gives us a lot of energy, helps us late in games. It’s just easy to get up for games like that, when you come onto the ice and there are 20,000 people just screaming.”

Could that be the environment that welcomes a newcomer or two to Buffalo? Rumblings around town have the team sniffing after a big, right-shot defenceman to help solidify the defence corps. A reunion with old friend Rasmus Ristolainen? A deal for Atlantic Division mainstay Brandon Carlo, who moved from Boston to Toronto last March?

Again, it’s Kekalainen’s task to put the marbles on the scale and see what might tip the balance. If, come Friday at 3 p.m. ET, he doesn’t find any hot sauce to put on his Buffalo wings, that would be just fine, too.

“Regardless of whether we make a move or not, the team has belief,” Thompson said. “We could go get someone or we could make no moves and I don’t think it would change the belief in the room. Obviously the decisions that get made at the deadline are out of our control; that’s what those guys get paid to do and we get paid to go on the ice and perform. I love the chemistry we have in the room and the belief we have in the room. With that said, I don’t know if there’s (any trade) that would (negatively) affect that moving forward.”

Yes, negativity is retreating from the scene around the Sabres. Dahlin notices the change every day, as people message him and approach him to say how excited they are about the squad.

“It makes me very happy,” he said. “That’s all I’ve wanted since I’ve got here.”

If anybody new does land in the next couple days, they’ll be arriving in a place that’s starting to feel very different from the past.