BUFFALO – When the dressing room door opened after the Sabres’ gut-wrenching 3-2 overtime loss in Game 7 on Monday, winger Alex Tuch was sitting in his stall, still wearing his No. 89 jersey and pondering things following what could be his final appearance wearing the Blue and Gold.
Across the room, captain Rasmus Dahlin spoke quietly to the media, his emotion still raw barely 20 minutes after Montreal Canadiens winger Alex Newhook scored from above the left circle 11:22 into the first overtime.
“It (expletive) sucks,” said Dahlin, one of 16 Sabres who experienced the Stanley Cup Playoffs for the first time.
When Sabres goalie Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen emerged to field questions, his eyes were red and moist.
“It sucks,” he said. “It’s nothing else. It sucks. I think that the guys put a hell of a fight today. It wasn’t the start we wanted but we played a good game in the end. It just sucks. It stinks, it sucks, I don’t know.”
The end of the most memorable seasons in the Sabres’ 56-year history hit coach Lindy Ruff and his players hard.
“I don’t think anyone in this room felt like we were done yet,” Sabres center Tage Thompson said. “Just disappointed.”
While they might not realize it now, the Sabres enjoyed one heck of a season. They ended their NHL-record 14-year playoff drought by winning 50 games, earning 109 points and capturing the Atlantic Division.
They believed they had the talent to win the Cup.
“I told the team it hurts,” Ruff said. “That pain will go away. But I won’t let this one game define the season we had. I told the players how proud I was of them.”
In the aftermath of the loss, Dahlin said he couldn’t appreciate the Sabres’ accomplishments just yet.
“Not right now,” he said. “Tomorrow I’ll appreciate more things.”
Remember, the Sabres were in last place in early December before a 10-game win streak started their unlikely climb up the standings.
“Just the resiliency,” Ruff said of what made his 2025-26 team so unique. “They never quit. All the challenges we faced. Some personal challenges with players. Some injuries to start the year. And just to keep coming back and once we hit December, we got a little bit healthy, just to keep coming back and winning games.”
Not surprisingly, Game 7 of a wildly entertaining second-round series lived up to the hype, with the Sabres erasing an early two-goal deficit before a raucous capacity crowd of 19,070 fans in KeyBank Center.
If the Sabres and Canadiens played each other 50 times, both teams might win 25 games. The longtime division rivals are that evenly matched.
Fresh off Saturday’s 8-3 win in Montreal, another game in which they roared back from a two-goal deficit, it felt like they were destined to win just their second Game 7 in franchise history.
“I thought it was just part of our journey,” Ruff said.
Thompson said “everyone in the room felt like we were winning that game.”
“I don’t really know how else to put it,” he said.
The Sabres, as they have for more than five months, fought back, getting goals from winger Jordan Greenway and Dahlin after Phillip Danault opened the scoring at 4:30 of the first period and Zachary Bolduc tallied a power-play goal at 14:29.
The Sabres might’ve ended the first period trailing three or four goals if Luukkonen hadn’t made several key stops.
Luukkonen, who looked stellar after replacing Alex Lyon in Saturday’s win, started after getting yanked in Thursday’s 6-3 home loss.
He looked sharp throughout the game, making 22 saves.
The Sabres finally solved goalie Jakub Dobes 13:29 into the second period, when defenseman Mattias Samuelsson’s shot hit Greenway. He and his linemates created the goal with some heavy work down low.
Dahlin, who’s often described as a gamer, possesses desire that enhances a dynamic skill set that makes him one of the world’s most talented defensemen.
The Swede, coming off a sensational one-goal, five-point night in Game 6, pinched in from the point after center Ryan McLeod and won a faceoff and beat Dobes from the left circle.
“He was on his toes, he wanted to be a difference every opportunity he could be,” Ruff said of Dahlin.
At 10:01, winger Beck Malenstyn appeared to score, but officials had whistled the play dead.
“I thought it was a little bit of a quick whistle,” Ruff said. “Because you can always go back and look at those. But didn’t really get an explanation on it.”
The Sabres face plenty of difficult questions as they enter their first offseason under general manager Jarmo Kekalainen.
Ruff, a finalist for the Jack Adams Awards as the NHL’s top coach, is at the end of his two-year contract.
Yes, they the Sabres are a pretty darn good team. But do they have the right pieces to go far into the playoffs? Do they need tweaks or something more significant?
Tuch, 30, can become an unrestricted free agent on July 1. Tuch, who endured a rough second round, going pointless, is in the market for a long-term contract worth perhaps $10 million a season.
