How the Sabres Ended Their NHL-Record Playoff Drought With a Magical 100-Point Season

How much of your life can you recall from 2011?

The Buffalo Sabres were in the Stanley Cup Playoffs that year and were ultimately knocked out in the first round by the Philadelphia Flyers in seven games.

Personally, I remember watching the Sabres-Flyers Game 7 at the Bills Backers Bar in Albany, New York, while I was working for NBC, and I've been based in Buffalo since the start of the 2013-2014 season, when I started working for NHL.com.

The Sabres' loss in that series was painful at the time because it featured Danny Brière, a once-beloved star now with the Flyers, who haunted them with six goals in seven games. There was playoff star Ville Leino, who played so well against the Sabres and throughout the playoffs that the team's new owner, Terry Pegula, signed him to a six-year, $27 million contract as part of a big offseason splash of cash that was Pegula's way to say the old ways of not spending on the team were at an end.

That series was like the nexus of the universe for the franchise's fates over the past nearly 20 years. It also proved to be the last time they were in the playoffs.

On Saturday, the Sabres' NHL-record run of missing the postseason officially ended. Buffalo is going back to the playoffs after missing out for 14 straight years. A decade-and-a-half of darkness and truly dismal hockey has been put to bed.

I've never been a Sabres fan, but that kind of frustration in the eyes of fans and friends is hard to see year in and year out. It's even harder when you can't explain half of it despite having an up-close and personal look at it.

There's also the psychological rearrangement of adjusting to a team that looked like it would be the same old, same old, suddenly not being that at all.

But finally, after all this time, the drought era is over. For Sabres players, coaches, and fans alike, the end is as much relief as it is excitement, and, like most things that have to do with Buffalo sports, it didn't come without drama.

On Nov. 30, the Sabres were last in the Eastern Conference. A bizarre 7-4 loss to the Calgary Flames in early December highlighted Buffalo's horrific start, and it led to general manager Kevyn Adams' dismissal on Dec. 15.

But a funny thing happened on the trip to Western Canada. After 14 years of hurt, the franchise had finally hit its breaking point. It led to an accountability check and the genesis of how everything turned around.

"I think it all started on that West Coast Canada trip," Tage Thompson said. "We had a leadership meeting and just basically said we've got to be better and expressed out loud what we each could do better as individuals to help our group. When you say it all out, it makes it easier for you to hold each other accountable."

The night after the game in Calgary, the Sabres had a wild back-and-forth game in Edmonton against Connor McDavid and the Oilers. It ended with an Alex Tuch game-winner in overtime.

The win would kick off an unlikely 10-game winning streak and propel Buffalo from the bottom of the standings all the way into a playoff spot.

It's a position the Sabres haven't left since.

Instead of thinking of the big picture all the time, the team took a one-game-at-a-time approach and stuck to it in an almost Bill Belichick-like way, where as soon as a game was over, they were on to the next one. That mentality has forged their will into becoming the team they are now.

"(The maturity) is a long time coming, but I think that's the age that we're at, the experience we've had," Tuch said. "It's been a lot of ups and downs; this season's been a lot more ups, but we also had a tough stretch to start the year. To be where we're at is something we're proud of, but we're not complacent with. We're not sitting back and saying we've done our job; we're continuing to push and get better every day."

It fits in a lot of ways that the last coach to take the Sabres to the playoffs is also the guy who got them back there all these years later, Lindy Ruff.

The road back to Buffalo was also long and winding, featuring stints as a head coach in Dallas and New Jersey in between before coming back to the Sabres.

One day, Ruff will be honored by the Sabres and whether it's his playing number, his necktie (or both) that goes into the rafters, it won't matter. Despite all the doubts, he has proved you can come back home again.

Winning helps bring the fun back, but it's also brought fans back. Sabres fans are savvy, and they've been sold a lot of lines and a lot of hope over the years, only to see it turn out to be false.

Getting the team back to a point where sellout games are the norm, rather than an aberration or something spurred on by visiting Maple Leafs or Canadiens fans, is a credit to the way the team has approached the game on the ice.

Fans who were in their teens in 2011 are now adults with kids who may or may not be Sabres fans, given how mediocre the team has been for so long. Countless kids have never seen a Buffalo playoff game, and the adults who have been here all along have grown older and somewhat grayer.

For all of them, this is a culmination of a painful odyssey that has finally ended in success. It is a spark of hope for a new era and one that is full of excitement.