The Buffalo Sabres finally climbed out of the NHL’s longest active playoff drought last season, and now the organization is talking like a team that believes the climb is only beginning.
Assistant general manager Josh Flynn didn’t hide the ambition when he spoke with Amalie Benjamin of NHL.com. The message was clear: Buffalo sees a path well beyond simply getting back into the postseason.
"We're excited," Flynn told Amalie Benjamin of NHL.com. "We're excited about not just this year, but about what the next five or six years are going to hold for this organization. This last season was just the start and we had a lot of success, but the best is yet to come."
Flynn also made the larger goal plain.
"the ultimate goal is to win the Stanley Cup."
That belief comes after a season that started in familiar frustrating fashion. Buffalo was sitting at 11-14-4 in early December before ripping off one of the most stunning surges of the year. Over its final 53 games, the Sabres went 39-9-5, won the Atlantic Division, finished second in the Eastern Conference and piled up the fourth-most points in the league with 109.
The playoff run followed the same script: a breakthrough, then a gut punch. Buffalo beat the Boston Bruins in the first round, then lost to the Montreal Canadiens in Round 2 when its season ended in a Game 7 overtime defeat.
"You're there, you're in Game 7 in overtime and you're one bounce of the puck away from moving on and everybody feels it, from the players all the way to every staff member, and I think we all walked out of there saying, 'Look, we were good enough to go right up against Carolina and give Carolina a run for their money (in the Eastern Conference Final),'" Flynn told Benjamin.
Even with the ending, it was Buffalo’s deepest postseason run since 2007, when the club reached the conference finals for the second straight year. For a franchise that endured years of failed rebuilds and the league’s longest playoff absence, it marked a real turning point.
Now comes the harder part: proving that last season was the beginning of something sustainable.
The Sabres are set to bring back most of their core, with Tage Thompson and Rasmus Dahlin still front and center. But the offseason did not bring the splashy overhaul some fans were waiting for. General manager Jarmo Kekalainen added defensemen Olen Zellweger and Louis Crevier, while the biggest departures were Alex Tuch and Bowen Byram, both of whom were not going to sign long-term extensions.
Buffalo did not land direct replacements for either player, so the front office is banking on internal development to carry the next step forward.
"We expect internal growth from not only the guys like [Jiri] Kulich and [Konsta] Helenius, who didn't play much for us last year, but [Zach] Benson's going to take another step. We hope, and certainly believe, that he can do that," Flynn told Benjamin.
"We have so many other guys that are in that under-25 age group - Jack Quinn, [Josh] Doan, [Noah] Ostlund - we haven't even gotten to. They all have so much room for growth."
That’s a reasonable bet, especially with a farm system that has multiple prospects approaching NHL readiness. Still, losing Tuch and Byram creates real short-term questions, and Buffalo is asking a lot from young players who now have to produce sooner rather than later.
So far, the front office has shown no interest in forcing the issue with veteran stopgaps or panic moves. Buffalo seems comfortable moving ahead with the roster it has unless something major materializes. Winnipeg Jets goalie Connor Hellebuyck is viewed as the last realistic target.
The risk, of course, is obvious. The Eastern Conference looks loaded, the Atlantic Division is unforgiving, and almost everyone in the conference has playoff ambitions heading into the 2026-27 season. The margin for error is tiny.
If the young core doesn’t take the expected leap, Buffalo could just as easily slip backward. And after finally getting a taste of postseason hockey again, falling out of the picture in 2027 would hit hard.
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