The pressure is on for the Buffalo Sabres

The Buffalo Sabres finished the 2023-24 season with a 39-37-6 record and 84 points, sixth in the Atlantic Division and seven points behind the No. 2 Wildcard spot in the Eastern Conference.

After a 2022-23 campaign where they fell one point short of a playoff spot and looked to be on the upswing, to call this most-recent campaign a disappointment would be an understatement.

On the 2024-25 season premiere of Daily Faceoff LIVE, Frank Seravalli and Tyler Yaremchuk discuss the Sabres’ blue line and if this will be the year Buffalo snaps their 13-year playoff drought.

Tyler Yaremchuk: Let’s talk about some bold predictions, and let’s start out in the Eastern Conference. The season is already underway for some teams, and one of them is the Buffalo Sabres. Frank, your bold prediction is that the Sabres are finally making the playoffs, but they’re sitting here 0-2-0. Is there any reason to be worried about your prediction through two games?

Frank Seravalli: It’s a long season. It was an ugly start for a team struggling to score last year. They came home from Prague with two goals and no points, that’s really difficult. I still believe that over the course of this season, Buffalo is built on their back end. For my money, they have arguably the best top-four defense in the East: Rasmus Dahlin, Owen Power, Mattias Samuelsson, Bowen Byram, that’s a really strong starting point.

There’s a lot of pressure facing this team, and General Manager Kevyn Adams has said it’s go time. It’s his fifth year in this role, and his predecessor only got three. They’re staring down the longest playoff drought in North American professional sports, and when you get off to a start like that on another continent, no one is feeling good about themselves.

But there’s still tons of reasons to be optimistic about this Sabres team who, again, the strength is in their back end, and that’s the ultimate differentiator in this sport.

You can watch the full segment and the rest of the episode here…