Buffalo Sabres

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Lore & Background

The Sabres have twice advanced to the Stanley Cup Final, losing to the Philadelphia Flyers in 1975 and to the Dallas Stars in 1999. The Sabres, along with the Canucks, are the oldest active NHL franchises to have never won the Stanley Cup. The Sabres held the NHL record longest playoff drought in the NHL at 14 seasons, which occurred between the 2010–11 and 2025–26 seasons.

In Their Own Story

The 1993 playoffs brought a breakthrough for the Sabres. After a decade without a playoff series win, Buffalo faced the Boston Bruins in the Adams Division semifinals. Goaltender Dominik Hasek, acquired in a trade from the Chicago Blackhawks in 1992–93, anchored the team. The Sabres swept the Bruins in four games, their first playoff series victory in ten years. The series ended in game four in Buffalo with Brad May scoring the overtime winner, a goal made famous by Rick Jeanneret's 'May Day!' call. The celebration was short-lived, however, as the eventual Stanley Cup champion Montreal Canadiens swept the Sabres in the division final, with all four games ending 4–3. The following season, with the NHL adopting a conference playoff format, the Sabres faced the New Jersey Devils in the first round. In game six, Hasek won a 1–0 quadruple overtime goaltending duel against Martin Brodeur, but Buffalo lost the series in seven games. The Sabres then suffered another first-round playoff loss to the Philadelphia Flyers.

Reader's Guide

The Sabres' debut in 1970 also coincided with the AFL–NFL merger in which the Buffalo Bills joined the National Football League, and the National Basketball Association's Buffalo Braves also began to play. The city of Buffalo went from having no teams in the established major professional sports leagues to three in one off-season. Between the Braves and the Sabres, the Sabres would prove to be by far the more successful of the two; Paul Snyder, the nouveau riche Braves owner, publicly feuded with the old money Knoxes and the local college basketball scene, eventually losing those feuds and being forced to sell his team in 1976. Subsequent owners of the Braves, in a series of convoluted transactions tied to the ABA–NBA merger, moved the team out of Buffalo.

Did You Know?

• The Sabres' first owners were Seymour H. Knox III and Northrup Knox, scions of a family long prominent in Western New York and grandsons of the co-founders of the Woolworth's variety store chain.
• The Sabres' name was chosen because Seymour Knox felt a saber was a weapon carried by a leader, and could be effective on both offense and defense.
• The Sabres used Aram Khachaturian's Armenian war dance 'Sabre Dance' as their entrance song, typically at the beginning of each period.
• The first pick in the 1970 NHL amateur draft was determined by a spin of a wheel of fortune; the Sabres won the spin and selected Gilbert Perreault.
• The French Connection line of Gilbert Perreault, Rick Martin, and Rene Robert played together from 1972 to 1979, and a statue of the line stands outside KeyBank Center.