Why pain of Game 7 defeat won’t define best Sabres season in 19 years

BUFFALO, N.Y. — Pain can hit in such different ways, you wonder why we lump it all under the same umbrella.

The familiar ache of missing the playoffs for a ridiculous 14 straight seasons grows almost numbing with its persistent frustration. That brand of pain nags like a bum ankle but eventually just feels part of the Western New York uniform, interwoven with the identity of a whole generation of fans whose birthright is disappointment. 

The sad comfort of long-term losing is a whole different animal from the gut punch of a second-round knockout. On home ice. In overtime. Of Game 7. After quieting Bell Centre on a Saturday night. After rallying from a 0-2 deficit in a winner-take-all and revving the diehards to can’t-hear-yourself-think decibels.

It’s so late Monday night, it’s almost Tuesday. The Buffalo Sabres goaltender’s eyes are as red as the lamp Alex Newhook lit behind his net in the 72nd minute of Game 7, the final one of his season. Inside the home room hangs a giant, stuffed buffalo head and the quiet of a morgue.

“It just sucks. It stings. It sucks. I dunno,” Luukkonen says. 

The Sabres have just scored nine of the series’ final 12 goals. They’ve just dominated the Montreal Canadiens in every offensive category of Game 7 (shots, attempts, chances, high dangers, expected goals) except the one that matters. 

The Canadiens have won 3-2, advancing to the conference final, where they’ll face a Carolina Hurricanes team that must suddenly remember how hockey games work.

All because Newhook pulled a puck on a low-reward rush, slipped defenceman Rasmus Dahlin into a screen, and whipped a knuckle puck that dipped just under Luukkonen’s glove and over his left pad.

Before shaking hands and saluting fans and answering the tough questions, Luukkonen chucked hunks of his equipment down the hallway.

“It comes down to small things. They got the bounces,” Dahlin says. “F—— sucks.

“One shot decides the whole season. It sucks.”

Why it hurts is because for the first time in 15 years, Buffalo — a hockey town deprived of meaningful hockey — was actually good. And fun. Resilient. And surprising in all the best ways. 

When Dahlin tied Game 7 with a snipe in the third period, KeyBank Center jolted to life like Frankenstein’s monster. Your heart got kickstarted long before Mötley Crüe’s goal song had a chance to blast.

The teams in this series — overall the tightest but within stretches the most lopsided of Round 2 — treated goal-scoring the way Drake treats album drops: long buildups of anticipation, then a bunch all at once. And because of that, you expected the pressing Sabres to complete their plot twist Monday.

“I don’t think anyone in this room felt like we were done yet,” Tage Thompson says. “I thought we played a really good game, which makes it even tougher.

“Luuk played great. Keeps it tight for us. Pull our way back into it and felt like we had all the momentum. Just couldn’t score.”

No team in the Eastern Conference has scored more often than these Sabres, who piled 326 goals between the regular season and playoffs. A 327th would’ve kept them alive. 

Still, they should be celebrated for their accomplishments.

According to the royal-blue-and-gold hat legendary NFL broadcaster Chris Berman sported to the game, these Sabres were a WAGON. And a whole city guzzled Blue from a beer sabre and jumped aboard for the joyride.

“This is a giant step for us. A giant step for all the players to really get a feel what it’s really like to be proud of being a Buffalo Sabre, to be proud of playing here,” coach Lindy Ruff says.

“You know, when I took the job, I thought No. 1 was I wanted these guys to like being a Buffalo Sabre. I think they like being a Sabre, and I think they did our city proud. It wasn’t the result we wanted, and to a man they’re all disappointed, but they gave me everything you had in their tank.”

Forget the quenching of a drought that lasted since 2011, this was the best Sabres squad in 19 years.

They jumped year-over-year from 79 to 109 points, their most since 2007. They ousted the Bruins and nearly the Canadiens. After years of drafting top five, they finish top five.

“I don’t think you get to this spot, especially the way we started the season, without a group of brothers that want to go to war for each other,” Thompson says. “You’re going to face doubt and hate, and a bunch of noise all year long, especially in the position we were in. And the only way to get through that is to lean on each other. 

“We did that all year. We leaned on each other hard. A lot of hard work went into this season by everyone that lot of people don’t get to see. A lot of adversity and a lot of challenges. The physical and mental grind that we went through to get here is why it hurts so bad. Felt like we should have got rewarded for it a little bit more.”

Be it digging out of a self-inflicted October hole, overwhelming the more veteran Bruins in Round 1, or pushing the Habs to the brink, Ruff will remember this group for its resilience.

“This was a team that they never quit. And they probably had every excuse to at times, but they always found a reason to win,” Ruff says.

“The energy around our team, around the city, in this building, outside the building, this was the first time our players got to experience something like this. And I couldn’t be more proud of the way our city represented themselves with our play.”

Tonight feels dark, no doubt, but the future is bright for the third-youngest roster in the NHL.

Local man Alex Tuch, who failed to register a point in this series, is an impending unrestricted free agent, and he won’t be cheap to keep. Bulldog Zach Benson and Peyton Krebs are both restricted and in need of raises. But the bulk of Buffalo’s core is locked up, most at reasonable if not favourable rates. And GM Jarmo Kekalainen has cap space and momentum on his side.

But just because the long-suffering Sabres are entering a window of relevance doesn’t guarantee their ticket to Round 3 will be so close to getting punched.

“The way we were playing, I think everyone in the room felt like we were winning that game,” Thompson says. “We just gotta, unfortunately, take that taste with us into the summer and do something about it.”

The only remedy for this type of pain is winning.

“I told the team it hurts,” Ruff says. “That pain will go away. But I won’t let this one game define the season we had.”