BUFFALO – The adversity Sabres winger Tage Thompson endured on his way to becoming one of the NHL’s most dynamic threats makes each goal he scores feel a little sweeter and every win he celebrates alongside his teammates more satisfying.
At times after joining the Sabres seven years ago in a blockbuster trade with the St. Louis Blues, it felt like he would never fulfill his vast potential. He sat out games as healthy scratch, got demoted to the minors and suffered a season-ending injury.
As others doubted him, Thompson, whose Sabres open the season Thursday against the New York Rangers at KeyBank Center, never lost confidence in his talents.
“You … got to believe in yourself, which I think was never an issue for me,” he told the Times Herald following Tuesday’s practice.
Right now, his strong belief extends to the Sabres, who own an NHL-record 14-year playoff drought. He believes the challenges they’ve faced in recent seasons and their maturation mirrors his own journey.
“I think going through those challenges and that adversity as a team, it also makes you better,” Thompson said. “We’ve had a lot of losing seasons and faced a lot of challenges, and as a group, we’ve had to learn how to get better and learn from those situations, both from an Xs and Os standpoint, and mentally, just like a confidence standpoint, a little bit of a cockiness and swagger standpoint.”
The Sabres can either put up or shut up.
“Everyone here believes that’s what we’re capable of, it’s just going out and doing it,” Thompson said. “We’ve talked about it enough, so it’s just time to do it.”
Thompson, 27, noticed a change in the Sabres during the offseason. He said there wasn’t much chatter about “Oh, we got to make playoffs.”
In the past, he believes they talked about it too much.
“Now, it’s just kind of like we just expect that we’re just gonna do it,” he said.
Sabres captain Rasmus Dahlin said “it’s a different mentality around here this season.”
“It’s nothing we really hope for; it’s what we believe we’re going to do,” he said. “So it’s a huge difference there, and I’m excited about it.”
Dahlin believes the Sabres possess confidence and cockiness they must work to keep every day.
Much of that can be traced to the 12-7-1 run they enjoyed to close last season.
Yes, they had fallen out of the playoff chase. But over those final weeks, they developed a stronger identity and better understanding of what kind of style would lead to success.
“I think you got to believe in what you’re doing,” Sabres coach Lindy Ruff said. “You got to believe in what you’re doing will lead to wins. I still bounce back to the last 20 games, where even with people out of the lineup, some young guys up, we played winning hockey – the type of hockey that would allow us to win games, to be a playoff team. Consistent hockey.”
Ruff said the Sabres grasped that if they played a direct and predictable style, it creates speed while cutting down scoring chances against.
“The chances usually go up going the other way,” he said.
You can bet the 6-foot-6, 220-pound Thompson will generate a heck of a lot of those chances. Fresh off a 44-goal campaign, he seems poised to become the Sabres’ first 50-goal scorer since Alexander Mogilny and Pat LaFontaine both surpassed the prestigious mark in 1992-93.
When Thompson scored 15 times in 104 games over his first three seasons with the Sabres, the idea of him someday morphing into their leading scorer and offensive catalyst might’ve seemed absurd.
Slowly but surely, however, he kept improving.
“The thing that I kind of held onto the most during that time was just not comparing myself to other people, and just trying to work on getting better,” said Thompson, who, along with Dahlin, is the Sabres’ longest-tenured player.
Thompson said everything started to change during the summer of 2019, when he became more comfortable in his massive frame.
“That was the first year I really felt different physically, you know?” he said. “I felt mature, I felt strong, and I was ready for a good year, and I thought I was going to get an opportunity.”
Then Thompson injured his shoulder late during his first outing with the Sabres after being recalled from the Rochester Americans.
He did not play another game for 14 months.
Then as he recovered during the summer of 2020, he said everything clicked for him “ physically and mentally.”
“My first three, four years in the league took me a little bit to get comfortable in my body,” Thompson said. “Felt pretty weak, pretty uncoordinated. I think after that one summer where I came in and got injured, I’d felt probably the best I’d felt. So I knew I was going to be good if I got an opportunity.
“The following year, when Donny (Granato) takes over, is where I got my first real chance to be an impact player and play pretty much all situations.”
Thompson’s career took off when Granato, who had coached him at the US National Team Development Program, became head coach.
Granato moved Thompson to center, and he responded by scoring 114 goals over the next three seasons. While he has shifted back to right wing, the confidence he found in the middle should last until the day he retires.
During their season together in junior, Thompson was a raw teenager skating short minutes. Granato knew he would be a top-six forward but couldn’t give him that ice at the program.
So when they were reunited in Buffalo, Granato felt a sense of unfinished business. Thompson took the opportunity and ran with it.
“You knew this guy was going to become a star player,” Granato said. “So to be able to say, ‘OK, he hasn’t hit that success yet, but this will be fun to be a part of it because I know he’s going to do that.”