Sabres are finally on the precipice of the playoffs
Tuesday's victory continued the Sabres' methodical approach to a season no one could have imagined. They are an NHL-best 14-2-2 since the Olympic break and have reached 100 points for the first time since 2010.
One more win.
It doesn't have to come on Thursday in Ottawa, but that would obviously be the most convenient way for this situation to play out. And it would continue to help with the quest for a division title and top seed in the Eastern Conference.
One more win for the Buffalo Sabres to take that major first step this fan base has waited 14 years to see.
One more win to push all those memories of tanking and 18-game losing streaks and visiting fans chuckling their way to victories in the seats of KeyBank Center back into the recesses of our minds.
It's relatively delicious that the Sabres can finally clinch a playoff berth and end the longest postseason drought in NHL history with a win at Canadian Tire Centre in suburban Ottawa.
Sabres center Tage Thompson celebrates his goal against the New York Islanders during the third period on Tuesday at KeyBank Center.
Harry Scull Jr., Buffalo News
The Sabres and Senators, of course, split a pair of bitter playoff series in 2006 and 2007. And there's not a lot of love lost between the current editions either. Good luck finding too many fans of Ottawa captain Brady Tkachuk in the Sabres' locker room.
The Sabres didn't know they had reached a win-and-they 're-in scenario in the immediate aftermath of Tuesday's 4-3 nail-biter over the New York Islanders. And Wednesday is a day off, so they won't be heard from again until after Thursday's morning skate in Ottawa.
Tuesday's victory continued their methodical approach to a season no one could have imagined. They are an NHL-best 14-2-2 since the Olympic break. They have reached 100 points for the first time since 2010 and became the first post-1970 club to post 2,000 regular-season wins.
The Sabres have played four straight grinding affairs since returning home from California and have gone 2-1-1, with three decided by a goal. They beat the Islanders when Alex Tuch made a nifty feed to Peyton Krebs for a tiebreaking goal with 3:01 left.
They're showing they can play the kind of style that wins in April, May and June, just as much as they can win games like that 8-7 classic against Tampa last month.
That unnamed opposing player in last week's Sportsnet "32 Thoughts" column that accused the Sabres of playing "river hockey" probably needs to zip it. They can play it any way you want, dude. The bet here, by the way, is that it's a Lightning player.
And there's no doubt there's a little tweak going on from the club when you notice it suddenly started playing Gilbert Perreault's rendition of "Proud Mary" from a long-ago alumni game on the Jumbotron after its last two home wins.
What's the key lyric, of course?
You know it: "Rollin', rollin', rollin' on the river."
"Games are getting harder. Sometimes you gotta learn the hard way and, but more times than not, I think our group's going to be up for the challenge," Tuch said earlier in the day. "And I think that's something that we're focusing on, coming in and being ready for whatever opponent comes our way and whatever type of game it is. We're going to be able to match your intensity."
Center Josh Norris, who assisted on both of Buffalo's power-play goals but also absorbed a nasty hit from behind from Islanders captain Anders Lee, talked about how the team hasn't gotten flustered all season. Coach Lindy Ruff has routinely talked about it as "being comfortable with being uncomfortable."
There's going to be plenty of pearl-clutching moments in the playoffs and the Sabres seem prepared to deal with them.
"It's important that you've got to grind through games," Ruff said after his team's 46th win of the season, its most since Ruff's Presidents' Trophy team of 2007 won 53. "The experience of going through a segment of games like this and then leading up to the playoffs, you'd like it to be hard. And I think every game has been hard.
"You can live on every puck play. You can hate some bad plays. You can love some great plays. You have to have a lot of discipline to do the right thing at the right time. I think all year long, our team has gotten a lot better at that."
Things went very well for the Sabres on Tuesday. They won their own game while Ottawa, Detroit and Philadelphia were all losing to open the door for a Buffalo playoff clinch. Tampa Bay lost to Montreal, too, so the Sabres took a two-point lead in the Atlantic Division with the Lightning's return trip here looming Monday night.
And while the Sabres are focused on their own play, there's just no way not to pay attention to what's going on elsewhere.
"It's right there on the NHL app, so it's hard to miss, and it's exciting," Tuch said. "It makes it that much more fun when you're sitting in the position we're in and we know that we have meaningful games.
"We still know that we need to continue to try to push to become better in the push to win, because we do want home-ice advantage in the playoffs and we haven't clinched yet. So there's still a job that's not done."
The division and home ice are still topics for later games.
The only point of emphasis for Thursday is one more win. Any way you can do it. And finally put this infernal drought away forever.