‘A fever dream’: For Sabres fans, emotion of 15-year wait for Game 1 is overwhelming
BUFFALO – The Buffalo Sabres drove a wedge between Connor and Shorukh’s friendship, in a way.
There was no ill will between the two childhood friends. But people get older, go away to school, develop careers and put physical distance between them. For Connor and Shorukh, the Sabres were always the link connecting them, the passion they shared more than anything else. It was alive and well in the early 2000s, when the Sabres were winning the Presidents’ Trophy and making semi-regular runs to the Eastern Conference Final on the backs of Chis Drury, Danny Briere, Thomas Vanek and Ryan Miller. But 14 seasons and 15 miserable years is a long time to go without playoff hockey. Connor and Shorukh began to give up hope.
Connor was a Buffalo Bills and New York Yankees fan and easily slotted the Sabres “last on the totem pole.”
“There were times in the last 15 years when I said, ‘I just can’t watch this, I’m boycotting,’ ” Connor said. “But I would never switch teams. I’d love the Sabres until I die. But sometimes it was unwatchable, and I didn’t want to just get mad every night.”
This past fall marked the first time in the entire NHL-record playoff drought that Shorukh didn’t subscribe to any kind of TV package to watch games. The Sabres needed to earn back his attention. As he’d watched Sabres stars leave and win Stanley Cups elsewhere, from Jack Eichel to Sam Reinhart, Shorukh was convinced his team was cursed.
The idea of the Sabres became too depressing to share as a mutual hobby anymore, and the two friends began to lose touch. They would only talk every couple years, and only when the Sabres embarked on a hot streak, which always proved to be short lived. But they finally bought back in midway through this season, and there they were, together in person, reunited, walking outside KeyBank Center Saturday afternoon.
As far back as Dec. 9, 2025, it was the same as it ever was; the Sabres were last in the East with an 11-14-4 record and days away from firing GM Kevyn Adams. But suddenly, it changed. They’d won three games in a row by the time they axed Adams Dec. 15, and when Jarmo Kekalainen took over, he set a new tone of accountability, informing the players they were all expendable and wouldn’t be part of the franchise’s future if they didn’t put the work in.
The three-game streak grew to 10 games. The texts between Connor and Shorukh started flowing again. The bond that never really left surged back in full force.
By February, the stakes were high enough, the playoff possibility real enough, that the Olympic break was a scary hurdle to clear. Alas, the Sabres never lost their momentum, they established themselves as Eastern Conference alphas with a rousing 8-7 win over their Atlantic Division rival Tampa Bay Lightning March 8, and the Sabres never looked back.
Connor and Shorukh knew what to do. They hadn’t seen Sabres playoff hockey since they were middle schoolers. It was time to shoot their shot and snag tickets for Game 1 vs. the Boston Bruins Sunday night.
Neville, a 50-year-old consultant, couldn’t miss it either. He had to come home, even though he lives in Chicago now, even though it cost an arm and a leg to get his family tickets for Game 1. Not when he’d endured this much pain. He started supporting the Sabres in the early 1980s, watching them get knocked out of numerous Adams Division wars. His nostalgia extends through ‘May Day!’ and the peak of Dominik Hasek’s prime. Neville was in the building, then Marine Midland Arena, in the early hours of June 20, 1999, when Brett Hull scored in overtime to lift the Dallas Stars past the Sabres and clinch the Stanley Cup. Back then, Neville reminds Daily Faceoff, there were no smartphones or instant internet access in the palm of your hand. The fans were dejected, but only during the ride home on the Metro Rail did the disappointment boil to a rage as chatter began to spread about Hull’s skate being in the crease, Neville explained.
Neville was in his mid-20s then – and his mid-30s the last time he witnessed a Sabres postseason game. Now he’s married, a father of one, and he can barely contain his emotion about Sunday night. He’s put in the hard time, having forced himself never to look away despite the horrible on-ice results since 2011.
“I’ve watched everything in the last 15 years,” Neville told Daily Faceoff. “I calculated that it’s been 20 full 24-hour days of [Sabres hockey] I’ve watched in the last 15 years. I was done with them this year, but I still watched. ‘This is hopeless. What are we doing?’ ”
But Neville stuck with it and got rewarded. The winter heater slowly won him over. Flash forward to this week, and he was crying in a taxi, watching the team hype video synched with Buffalo band Goo Goo Dolls’ song “Better Days” for the fifth time.
These fans represent the middle generations of Sabres supporters, but as Daily Faceoff walked the streets and bars in downtown Buffalo Saturday afternoon, roughly 30 hours from puck drop, Sabres fans from every part of the team’s timeline were present. Sheryl and Charlie, married 50 years this July, soaked in the glory days of the French Connection Line in the 1970s, all the way through the last gasp of the Miller era before Buffalo’s final playoff appearance in 2010-11. But they never lost faith.
“Never, never, never,” said Charlie, who lives in East Amherst and has retired from a career in cryogenics but drives a school bus nowadays just for the love of it. “When you’re a Buffalonian, you’re always a Buffalonian. If you’re a Sabres fan or Bills fan, you never lose that.”
Charlie always felt Lindy Ruff’s return as head coach starting in 2024-25 was a positive omen. And Sheryl believes the team galvanizing around Rasmus Dahlin and the terrifying health tribulations his fiancée Carolina endured revealed how mentally strong the team was this season. They wanted to win for him, and that’s when Sheryl knew they wouldn’t stop doing it.
How about the fans who literally weren’t alive when Buffalo last played in the postseason? Buddies Alex, Charles and Austin, not yet teenagers and in town for a hockey camp this weekend, haven’t had anything to cheer about in their decade-plus as fans. “Not fun,” is how Alex sums up his entire fanhood experience before this season. The kids don’t even know what playoff hockey feels like for their team. Austin felt his allegiance threaten to follow Jack Eichel to the Vegas Golden Knights when he was unceremoniously traded there in 2021. Austin didn’t abandon the Sabres but was jealous of his friends getting to watch their teams in the postseason every year. Charlie, meanwhile, was as much a Victor Hedman fan as a Dahlin fan and couldn’t help being drawn to the consistent winning of the Lightning.
But the boys’ spark for the Sabres has finally been truly lit for the first time. They’re setting sail on a new era as fans.
And what does it mean for Sunday? The emotion of it all will be almost too much to take for some.
“It still feels like a fever dream,” Shorukh said. “I can’t even contain how excited I am.”
And now, the fans face the same challenge the players will in Game 1: finding the balance between appreciating what will undoubtedly be an unforgettable, deafeningly loud, electrically sentimental game but also avoiding the complacency that could accompany finally reaching the round of 16.
It’s not a bad thing to take it all in, but the Sabres have the NHL’s best record since mid-December. They finished the season 39-9-5 over their final 53 games. Playoff hockey will be gloriously welcomed back, with many a beer Sabre downed Sunday night. But something else has eluded Buffalo not just for 15 years, but its entire 55-season history: the Stanley Cup. And it’s absolutely within reach this season.
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POST SPONSORED BY bet365
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