The Buffalo Sabres hoped the 2025-26 season would finally be a turning point after 14 years of misery for the laughingstock of North American pro sports. Instead, the team is winless through three games and a fan threw their jersey on the ice following a recent home loss to the Colorado Avalanche.
Some may call it rock bottom, but those who’ve lived through the longest playoff drought in NHL history know the Sabres’ fortunes may be a bottomless pit. It’s why most remained skeptical despite optimistic preseason projections from the analytics community.
CBS Sports’ Austin Nivison, who ranked Buffalo at No. 20 in his training camp power rankings, dropped the Blue and Gold to No. 28 of the league’s 32 teams on Wednesday.
“This may be a world record for the quickest vibes crash ever,” Nivison wrote.
Now the Sabres must find a way to stop the bleeding before their margin for error, which was already microscopic to open the campaign, is completely eliminated in the season’s first month.
The Buffalo Sabres’ season outlook already looks a lot different now than it did one week ago
Perhaps Sabres fans should’ve known things were trending in a familiar direction when it was announced starting goalie Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen arrived to camp hurt. UPL remains sidelined, though backup Alex Lyon has played quite well in his absence.
An endless stream of other injuries popped up throughout the preseason. Buffalo’s roster still isn’t anywhere close to full strength despite the impending return of potential breakout star Zach Benson, and it won’t be for awhile with Josh Norris out at least eight weeks.
Injury issues strike every organization, and they can’t be used as the sole excuse for poor play, but for a team that’s crumbled under any semblance of adversity in recent years, it sure didn’t help the cause.
So, the question becomes: Where do the Sabres go from here?
General manager Kevyn Adams, who’s been unable to acquire true game-changing talent in six years leading the front office, likely won’t be able to make any blockbuster additions this early in the season.
Head coach Lindy Ruff and his staff, which remained the same despite last season’s struggles, don’t appear to have any fresh ideas to get more out of the current roster.
Buffalo does have some key cornerstones in Tage Thompson and Rasmus Dahlin, but the rest of the squad doesn’t measure up to the Eastern Conference contenders, and that problem has been made worse by the injury woes.
It creates a situation where the Sabres basically have to hope those in the locker room can elevate their level of play enough to keep the season alive.
Yes, the Blue and Gold still have 79 games left in an 82-game schedule. A quick winning streak could leave the negative vibes in the rearview mirror and allow the team to catch its breath.
Doing that would require reversing a lot of historical trends, however, and that feels like a high mountain to climb for a team that’s making many of the same mistakes this season that consistently caused this core to miss the playoffs in recent years.
The Sabres could prove a lot of doubters wrong if they do turn the tide back in their favor, though.