The Buffalo Sabres‘ last trip to the playoffs was in 2011. The NHL has since added franchises in Las Vegas and Seattle, and both expansion teams have made the playoffs.
How is it that the rest of the NHL can benefit from the Buffalo Sabres — but the Buffalo Sabres can’t benefit themselves?
The lack of success is set against a backdrop of the Buffalo Bills — also owned by Terry Pegula — being perennial Super Bowl contenders.
From losing players to better teams, to a lack of continuity in the front office, to difficulties in luring big free agents to a cold climate with a high state income tax, the challenges are myriad. ESPN spoke with a dozen people — including current and former Sabres — about what it will take to turn the franchise around.
“I always tell people if you can figure out a way to win in Buffalo, it’s a pretty damn good place to play,” Montour said. “You see the Bills and the passion they have there. Sabres fans are just waiting for a season or something to turn there.”
TIED WITH THENew York Jets for the longest playoff drought among MLB, NBA, NFL and NHL teams, the Sabres haven’t struggled to acquire talent; it’s making the most of that talent through proper development that’s been the issue.
The Sabres’ average first-round draft position since their most recent playoff appearance is 10th overall. Their first rebuild attempt saw them draft Eichel and Reinhart in the first round, and use later-round selections on J.T. Compher, Brandon Hagel, Victor Olofsson and Ullmark, among others. They also signed undrafted college free agents such as Evan Rodrigues, who played with Eichel at Boston University.
Some players, like Compher, were moved in trades. Others, like Hagel, never signed with the team. But the Sabres also made deals, like acquiring Montour ahead of the trade deadline back in 2018-19.
Eichel was a three-time All-Star with the Sabres before he was traded following a disagreement with the team about his preferred method of care for a neck injury.
Reinhart and Ullmark became All-Stars after leaving the Sabres. Montour departed and emerged into a top-pairing defenseman, while O’Reilly left and further cemented his status as one of the game’s best two-way forwards.
Four of those five players have also won a Stanley Cup and were instrumental in their teams capturing those championships.
Deciphering why players’ careers take off after they leave Buffalo is a complex exercise.
“There’s a lot of different variables. There’s also a lot of different people,” a former Sabres player said. “Some people thrive in different environments. I played with a lot of great players during my time in Buffalo. At that point, did I feel we didn’t unlock our true potential? Yeah, I really think that we had a team that could go far into the playoffs.”
Eichel, Reinhart and Ullmark each had varying degrees of success before they left Buffalo. Eichel had five straight 20-goal seasons and scored 36 in his final full season. Reinhart was a five-time 20-goal scorer, while Ullmark won 41 games with a .916 save percentage over three seasons as a full-time NHL goalie.
Compare that to what they did when they left:
Eichel, who averaged 0.95 points per game with the Sabres, is averaging more than a point per game with the Golden Knights, with whom he won the Cup in 2023.
Reinhart is a four-time 30-goal scorer who scored 57 for the Panthers last season when they won the Cup.
Ullmark joined the Boston Bruins, where he won 88 games and had a .924 save percentage in three seasons before being traded to Ottawa. Ullmark would win the Vezina Trophy for the NHL’s best goaltender in his second season with the Bruins.
“That’s where I ask, ‘Did some of those guys really get better when they left or were they already on that [trajectory] and another team saw the benefit?'” the former team employee asked. “Jack was an All-Star, while we knew Sam was already really, really good.”
But what about those non-homegrown players?
Montour had 13 goals and 0.38 points per game in 112 games for the Sabres. He joined the Panthers and nearly had more points in his first season in Florida than he did during his entire time with the Sabres, while also being on the Cup-winning team in 2024.
O’Reilly was an All-Star in Buffalo who finished 11th in consecutive seasons for the Selke Trophy, which goes to the NHL’s best two-way forward. He was a three-time 20-goal scorer who averaged 0.79 points per game for the Sabres. He was traded to the Blues and would become a two-time All-Star who won the Selke, averaging 0.82 points during his five seasons in St. Louis while — you guessed it — winning the Stanley Cup in 2019, earning the Conn Smythe Trophy as MVP of the playoffs.
“When I went to Florida, I was more of a depth piece and then when [coach Paul Maurice] came in, he let me run free and play my game,” Montour said. “You have to find the right opportunity and a situation that fits. In Buffalo, when I was there, you win a couple games and then you lose a couple games, it was like an automatic change.
“I wasn’t there long, but there’s change all the time.”
DO THE SABRES have the infrastructure in place for their young talent to succeed?
The former Sabres player and former team employee suggest part of the reason Eichel, Reinhart and Ullmark thrived elsewhere is the teams they joined had established winning cultures.
“People get so caught up in looking at how it’s going for [the Sabres] and then looking at other players that might have been there,” the former player said. “They think, ‘Oh, he’s playing better hockey.’ Well, he’s part of a team that’s playing really good hockey.”
The same applied to Reinhart joining a Panthers team that provided opportunities to newcomers, while Ullmark joined a Bruins team that had a strong culture thanks to Patrice Bergeron and Brad Marchand.
Losing top talent has only added to Buffalo’s struggle for continuity and culture-building. The Sabres have also had seven coaching changes and four GMs since their last playoff appearance 14 seasons ago.
The former team employee said those constant changes were part of a larger issue that was facing the franchise, that they were trying to rush their rebuild, only to hit the reset button more than once.
“When I was there, and I wasn’t there long, they fired their coaches right away,” said Montour, who played for three different coaches in Buffalo. “[Former Sabres GM Jason Botterill] had maybe three years. Was that enough time for a rebuild? You’re firing a guy, bringing a new guy in. It feels like every two or three years, you’re bringing a new guy in.”
The closest the Sabres have come to reaching the playoffs came in 2022-23 when they finished a point out of the final wild-card spot.
One agent said the Sabres entered the ensuing offseason needing more experience on defense and in goal. The 2022-23 season saw them regularly play five defenseman who were younger than 25, while goalie Craig Anderson was retiring.
Clifton was sixth in ice time among Sabres defensemen. Johnson played 50 games before he was traded. Their goaltending finished tied for 15th in team save percentage.
The Sabres finished seven points out of the playoffs — and would go through another coaching change.
“[Clifton and Johnson] are fine players, but were those the moves you needed to take a team that missed by one game to a contender level?” the agent asked. “I’ve seen [Sabres GM Kevyn Adams] talk about taxes and palm trees. I’m sure it is not the same in Buffalo as it is in Florida, but this is also a team that has basically spent at the cap floor for the last couple years. When you are that close to making the playoffs, you can go out and overspend for the right person.”
A second agent explained that Buffalo isn’t a city players are openly avoiding. But that’s not to say there aren’t challenges.
The agent said there’s the climate — with an average annual temperature of 53 degrees that dips to an average of 42 degrees during the span of the NHL regular season. They also said New York has the third-highest income tax in the nation, at 10.9% (for individuals making over $1,077,550). And with the Sabres consistently missing the playoffs, that makes it difficult to sell a vision that the franchise is trending upward.
“It’s one of those markets where you do need to develop your young stars to be the veterans in order to get over the hump,” the second agent said. “As much as people want that to happen the right way, it’s still going to take some time.”
MOVING ON FROM Eichel, Reinhart & Co. allowed the Sabres to get the needed assets to build their current core.
The Sabres had the No. 1 pick in 2018 and again in 2021, using those picks on defensemen Rasmus Dahlin and Owen Power, respectively. They’ve used top-10 picks to draft forwards Zach Benson, Jack Quinn and Cozens, before he was traded. Trades have brought in former first-round picks such as Bowen Byram, Peyton Krebs, Tage Thompson and Alex Tuch along with Josh Norris, who was part of the trade package involving Cozens.
That has allowed the Sabres to build a promising roster, with five top-five picks and 10 first-round picks who are younger than 25. They’ve seen Dahlin and Power become legitimate top-four options while Thompson, who arrived in the O’Reilly trade, has emerged as a top-line center.
But they still have the worst record in the Eastern Conference, and the third-worst record in the entire NHL.
“You don’t add veterans to what is still the youngest team, and it just never seems to get done,” the first agent said. “Is it the guy behind the guy who walks behind the guy? I can’t really tell you which of those people is to blame.
“The problem is everything seems to go wrong. Every time they take a step, you think, ‘Hey, they’re going to take a step’ and then 16 other things go wrong.”
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Why acquring Dylan Cozens is a ‘big trade’ for Ottawa
The “TradeCentre” crew reacts to the news Dylan Cozens is being traded to the Ottawa Senators.
Byram and Thompson both said the Sabres’ current roster has created more opportunities for younger players that might not have existed elsewhere. Byram is averaging more ice time in his first 62 games with the Sabres this season than what he had with the Colorado Avalanche in 51 games in 2023-24.
Thompson said the opportunity has led to individual success, while everyone is trying to figure out a way to parlay that into team success.
“We have a great group of guys, I don’t think that’s the issue,” Byram said. “We’ve got a really young team. We’re trying to grow together and build something together. That doesn’t always happen overnight.”
But how much will things change in order for the Sabres to get to their desired destination?
They have only two pending unrestricted free agents: defenseman Jacob Bryson and goaltender James Reimer. They have six players with contracts that have more than three years remaining, including Norris, Thompson, Dahlin, Power, Luukkonen and Mattias Samuelsson.
This summer could bring significant change, considering Byram is one of eight players who are pending restricted free agents this year or next.
There are also questions about Adams’ future with the team. Adams has been Sabres GM for four seasons. That’s one season longer than Botterill lasted, and a half-season more than Tim Murray, an in-season replacement for Darcy Regier in 2014.
The Sabres were 112-175-37 under Murray and 88-115-30 under Botterill. As of this week, the Sabres’ record under Adams was 140-145-30. The Sabres have had three seasons of more than 75 points, which doesn’t sound like much, but it makes Adams’ tenure the most successful the club has had since its last playoff appearance.
This season, they are projected to finish with 76 points, a decline from Adams’ second season when they had 91 points and last season’s 84 points.
Adams declined to be interviewed for this story.
“I don’t know for sure if it’s ownership or if it’s Kevyn,” the first agent said. “But it seems if I was ownership — given Mr. Pegula owns the Bills and has vast resources from his other businesses — I’d be willing to spend rather than have an arena that’s half full with people that’s calling for me to sell the team.”
BOSTON — The Red Sox activated All-Star third baseman Alex Bregman from the 10-day injured list before Friday’s game against Tampa Bay.
Bregman, who has been sidelined since May 24 with a right quad strain, returned to his customary spot in the field and was slotted in the No. 2 spot of Boston’s lineup for the second of a four-game series against the Rays. He sustained the injury when he rounded first base and felt his quad tighten up.
A two-time World Series winner who spent the first nine seasons of his big league career with the Houston Astros, Bregman signed a $120 million, three-year contract in February. At the time of the injury, he was hitting .299 with 11 homers and 35 RBI. Those numbers led to him being named to the American League’s All-Star team for the third time since breaking into the majors with the Astros in 2016.
Bregman missed 43 games with the quad strain. Earlier this week, he told reporters that he was trending in a direction where he didn’t believe he would require a minor league rehab assignment. With three games left before the All-Star break, the Red Sox agreed the time was right to reinstate a player to a team that entered Friday in possession of one of the AL’s three wild-card berths.
“He’s going to do his part,” Red Sox manager Alex Cora said before Friday’s game. “Obviously, the timing, we’ll see where he’s at, but he’s been working hard on the swing … visualizing and watching video.”
JIM ABBOTT IS sitting at his kitchen table, with his old friend Tim Mead. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, they were partners in an extraordinary exercise — and now, for the first time in decades, they are looking at a stack of letters and photographs from that period of their lives.
The letters are mostly handwritten, by children, from all over the United States and Canada, and beyond.
“Dear Mr. Abbott …”
“I have one hand too. … I don’t know any one with one hand. How do you feel about having one hand? Sometimes I feel sad and sometimes I feel okay about it. Most of the time I feel happy.”
“I am a seventh grader with a leg that is turned inwards. How do you feel about your arm? I would also like to know how you handle your problem? I would like to know, if you don’t mind, what have you been called?”
“I can’t use my right hand and most of my right side is paralyzed. … I want to become a doctor and seeing you makes me think I can be what I want to be.”
For 40 years, Mead worked in communications for the California Angels, eventually becoming vice president of media relations. His position in this department became a job like no other after the Angels drafted Abbott out of the University of Michigan in 1988.
There was a deluge of media requests. Reporters from around the world descended on Anaheim, most hoping to get one-on-one time with the young left-handed pitcher with the scorching fastball. Every Abbott start was a major event — “like the World Series,” Angels scout Bob Fontaine Jr. remembers. Abbott, with his impressive amateur résumé (he won the James E. Sullivan Award for the nation’s best amateur athlete in 1997 and an Olympic gold medal in 1988) and his boyish good looks, had star power.
That spring, he had become only the 16th player to go straight from the draft to the majors without appearing in a single minor league game. And then there was the factor that made him unique. His limb difference, although no one called it that back then. Abbott was born without a right hand, yet had developed into one of the most promising pitchers of his generation. He would go on to play in the majors for ten years, including a stint in the mid ’90s with the Yankees highlighted by a no-hitter in 1993.
Abbott, and Mead, too, knew the media would swarm. That was no surprise. There had been swarms in college, and at the Olympics, wherever and whenever Abbott pitched. Who could resist such an inspirational story? But what they hadn’t anticipated were the letters.
The steady stream of letters. Thousands of letters. So many from kids who, like Abbott, were different. Letters from their parents and grandparents. The kids hoping to connect with someone who reminded them of themselves, the first celebrity they knew of who could understand and appreciate what it was like to be them, someone who had experienced the bullying and the feelings of otherness. The parents and grandparents searching for hope and direction.
“I know you don’t consider yourself limited in what you can do … but you are still an inspiration to my wife and I as parents. Your success helps us when talking to Andy at those times when he’s a little frustrated. I’m able to point to you and assure him there’s no limit to what he can accomplish.”
In his six seasons with the Angels, Abbott was assisted by Mead in the process of organizing his responses to the letters, mailing them, and arranging face-to-face meetings with the families who had written to him. There were scores of such meetings. It was practically a full-time job for both of them.
“Thinking back on these meetings with families — and that’s the way I’d put it, it’s families, not just kids — there was every challenge imaginable,” Abbott, now 57, says. “Some accidents. Some birth defects. Some mental challenges that aren’t always visible to people when you first come across somebody. … They saw something in playing baseball with one hand that related to their own experience. I think the families coming to the ballparks were looking for hopefulness. I think they were looking for what it had been that my parents had told me, what it had been that my coaches had told me. … [With the kids] it was an interaction. It was catch. It was smiling. It was an autograph. It was a picture. With the parents, it ran deeper. With the parents, it was what had your parents said to you? What coaches made a difference? What can we expect? Most of all, I think, what can we expect?”
“It wasn’t asking for autographs,” Mead says of all those letters. “They weren’t asking for pictures. They were asking for his time. He and I had to have a conversation because this was going to be unique. You know, you could set up another player to come down and sign 15 autographs for this group or whatever. But it was people, parents, that had kids, maybe babies, just newborn babies, almost looking for an assurance that this is going to turn out all right, you know. ‘What did your parents do? How did your parents handle this?'”
One of the letters Abbott received came from an 8-year-old girl in Windsor, Ontario.
She wrote, “Dear Jim, My name is Tracey Holgate. I am age 8. I have one hand too. My grandpa gave me a picture of you today. I saw you on TV. I don’t know anyone with one hand. How do you feel about having one hand? Sometimes I feel sad and sometimes I feel okay about it. Most of the time I feel happy. I hope to see you play in Detroit and maybe meet you. Could you please send me a picture of you in uniform? Could you write back please? Here is a picture of me. Love, Tracey.”
Holgate’s letter is one of those that has remained preserved in a folder — and now Abbott is reading it again, at his kitchen table, half a lifetime after receiving it. Time has not diminished the power of the letter, and Abbott is wiping away tears.
Today, Holgate is 44 and goes by her married name, Dupuis. She is married with four children of her own. She is a teacher. When she thinks about the meaning of Jim Abbott in her life, it is about much more than the letter he wrote back to her. Or the autographed picture he sent her. It was Abbott, all those years ago, who made it possible for Tracey to dream.
“There was such a camaraderie there,” she says, “an ability to connect with somebody so far away doing something totally different than my 8-year-old self was doing, but he really allowed me to just feel that connection, to feel that I’m not alone, there’s other people that have differences and have overcome them and been successful and we all have our own crosses, we all have our own things that we’re carrying and it’s important to continue to focus on the gifts that we have, the beauty of it.
“I think sometimes differences, disabilities, all those things can be a gift in a package we would never have wanted, because they allow us to be people that have an empathetic heart, an understanding heart, and to see the pain in the people around us.”
Now, years after Abbott’s career ended, he continues to inspire.
Among those he influenced, there are professional athletes, such as Shaquem Griffin, who in 2018 became the first NFL player with one hand. Griffin, now 29, played three seasons at linebacker for the Seattle Seahawks.
Growing up in Florida, he would watch videos of Abbott pitching and fielding, over and over, on YouTube.
“The only person I really looked up to was Jim Abbott at the time,” Griffin says, “which is crazy, because I didn’t know anybody else to look up to. I didn’t know anybody else who was kind of like me. And it’s funny, because when I was really little, I used to be like, ‘Why me? Why this happen to me?’ And I used to be in my room thinking about that. And I used to think to myself, ‘I wonder if Jim Abbott had that same thought.'”
Carson Pickett was born on Sept. 15, 1993 — 11 days after Abbott’s no-hitter. Missing most of her left arm below the elbow, she became, in 2022, the first player with a limb difference to appear for the U.S. women’s national soccer team.
She, too, says that Abbott made things that others told her were impossible seem attainable.
“I knew I wanted to be a professional soccer player,” says Pickett, who is currently playing for the NWSL’s Orlando Pride. “To be able to see him compete at the highest level it gave me hope, and I think that that kind of helped me throughout my journey. … I think ‘pioneer’ would be the best word for him.”
Longtime professional MMA fighter Nick Newell is 39, old enough to have seen Abbott pitch for the Yankees. In fact, when Newell was a child he met Abbott twice, first at a fan event at the Jacob Javits Center in Manhattan and then on a game day at Yankee Stadium. Newell was one of those kids with a limb difference — like Griffin and Pickett, due to amniotic band syndrome — who idolized Abbott.
“And I didn’t really understand the gravity of what he was doing,” Newell says now, “but for me, I saw someone out there on TV that looked like I did. And I was the only other person I knew that had one hand. And I saw this guy out here playing baseball and it was good to see somebody that looked like me, and I saw him in front of the world.
“He was out there like me and he was just living his life and I think that I owe a lot of my attitude and the success that I have to Jim just going out there and being the example of, ‘Hey, you can do this. Who’s to say you can’t be a professional athlete?’ He’s out there throwing no-hitters against the best baseball players in the world. So, as I got older, ‘Why can’t I wrestle? Why can’t I fight? Why can’t I do this?’ And then it wasn’t until the internet that I heard people tell me I can’t do these things. But by then I had already been doing those things.”
Griffin.
Pickett.
Newell.
Just three of the countless kids who were inspired by Jim Abbott.
When asked if it ever felt like too much, being a role model and a hero, all the letters and face-to-face meetings, Abbott says no — but it wasn’t always easy.
“I had incredible people who helped me send the letters,” he says. “I got a lot more credit sometimes than I deserved for these interactions, to be honest with you. And that happened on every team, particularly with my friend Tim Mead. There was a nice balance to it. There really was. There was a heaviness to it. There’s no denying. There were times I didn’t want to go [to the meetings]. I didn’t want to walk out there. I didn’t want to separate from my teammates. I didn’t want to get up from the card game. I didn’t want to put my book down. I liked where I was at. I was in my environment. I was where I always wanted to be. In a big league clubhouse surrounded by big league teammates. In a big league stadium. And those reminders of being different, I slowly came to realize were never going to go away.”
But being different was the thing that made Abbott more than merely a baseball star. For many people, he has been more than a role model, more than an idol. He is the embodiment of hope and belonging.
“I think more people need to realize and understand the gift of a difference,” Dupuis says. “I think we have to just not box everybody in and allow everybody’s innate light to shine, and for whatever reasons we’ve been created to be here, [let] that light shine in a way that it touches everybody else. Because I think that’s what Jim did. He allowed his light to permeate and that light, in turn, lit all these little children’s lights all over the world, so you have this boom of brightness that’s happening and that’s uncontrollable, that’s beautiful.”
NEW YORK — Chicago Cubs center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong is projected to receive the largest amount from this season’s $50 million pre-arbitration bonus pool based on his regular-season statistics.
Crow-Armstrong is on track to get $1,091,102, according to WAR calculations through July 8 that Major League Baseball sent to teams, players and agents in a memo Friday that was obtained by The Associated Press.
He earned $342,128 from the pool in 2024.
“I was aware of it after last year, but I have no clue of the numbers,” he said Friday. “I haven’t looked at it one time.”
Crow-Armstrong, Skenes, Wood, Carroll, Brown, De La Cruz and Greene have been picked for Tuesday’s All-Star Game.
A total of 100 players will receive the payments, established as part of the 2022 collective bargaining agreement and aimed to get more money to players without sufficient service time for salary arbitration eligibility. The cutoff for 2025 was 2 years, 132 days of major league service.
Players who signed as foreign professionals are excluded.
Most young players have salaries just above this year’s major league minimum of $760,000. Crow-Armstrong has a $771,000 salary this year, Skenes $875,000, Wood $764,400 and Brown $807,400.
Carroll is in the third season of a $111 million, eight-year contract.
As part of the labor agreement, a management-union committee was established that determined the WAR formula used to allocate the bonuses after awards. (A player may receive only one award bonus per year, the highest one he is eligible for.) The agreement calls for an interim report to be distributed the week before the All-Star Game.
Distribution for awards was $9.85 million last year, down from $11.25 million in 2022 and $9.25 million in 2023.
A player earns $2.5 million for winning an MVP or Cy Young award, $1.75 million for finishing second, $1.5 million for third, $1 million for fourth or fifth or for making the All-MLB first team. A player can get $750,000 for winning Rookie of the Year, $500,000 for second or for making the All-MLB second team, $350,000 for third in the rookie race, $250,000 for fourth or $150,000 for fifth.
Kansas City shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. topped last year’s pre-arbitration bonus pool at $3,077,595, and Skenes was second at $2,152,057 despite not making his big league debut until May 11. Baltimore shortstop Gunnar Henderson was third at $2,007,178.