{"id":491913,"date":"2026-03-07T20:42:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-07T20:42:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/491913\/"},"modified":"2026-03-07T20:42:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-07T20:42:12","slug":"buffalo-gm-drops-post-deadline-truth-bomb-that-will-fire-up-fans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/491913\/","title":{"rendered":"Buffalo GM drops post-deadline truth bomb that will fire up fans"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Buffalo Sabres have been one of the big surprises<\/a> of the 2025-26 National Hockey League campaign, currently tied with the Tampa Bay Lightning for top spot in the Atlantic Division with 20 games left in their regular-season.<\/p>\n

They’ve won five games in a row, allowed just eight goals in that span, and are on the verge of breaking the longest postseason drought<\/a> in North American professional sports.<\/p>\n

And they got even better ahead of the NHL Trade Deadline<\/a>, nearly acquiring Colton Parayko<\/a> but instead adding depth in the form of Logan Stanley and Luke Schenn from the Winnipeg Jets<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cBuffalo is a great city,\u201d general manager Jarmo Kekalainen said, per NHL.com’s Derek Van Diest. \u201cWe have a great hockey team that\u2019s winning games. A fun atmosphere. An electric building. Our players are loving it here. The Buffalo Sabres deserve a lot of respect right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

The new GM added: \u201cOur guys compete, and I think that\u2019s the thing that I give this group and coaching staff a lot of credit for. I think everybody knows we have a lot of skill, but our guys compete and we\u2019ve shown a lot of character throughout the season, and that\u2019s part of the growth process, too, and I think that\u2019s the greatest part of the success here in the last few months that I\u2019ve seen. We\u2019ve really shown a lot of character.\u201d<\/p>\n

KeyBank Center going to be rocking this spring<\/p>\n

Barring an epic collapse, playoff hockey will be returning to Western New York for the first time since the 2010-11 season \u2014 and the KeyBank Center is going to be electric when that time comes.<\/p>\n

The Sabres are flush with skill, led by Tage Thompson and Rasmus Dahlin but also featuring a plethora of players having career seasons.<\/p>\n

Now, they’ve brought in the grit, adding Stanley (6-foot-7, 231 pounds) and Schenn (6-foot-2, 225 pounds) to a blue line that already features \u201cMattias Samuelsson (the No. 32 pick in the 2018 draft), Bowen Byram (the No. 4 pick by the Colorado Avalanche in the 2019 NHL Draft) and Owen Power (the No. 1 pick in the 2021 NHL Draft),\u201d per Van Diest.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe one thing that I\u2019ve noticed since we\u2019ve had some success is that teams try to test us a little bit,\u201d Kekalainen explained. \u201cThey\u2019ve been trying to push us around, and I think we added some elements that that\u2019s not going to happen so easily anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n

In net, Alex Lyon and Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen have both been terrific since the Olympic break, providing timely saves and giving their team a chance to win on any given night.<\/p>\n

Add it all together and you have a Buffalo team that is surging, sitting 37-19-6 and oozing confidence ahead of a visit from the Nashville Predators on Saturday afternoon.<\/p>\n

It looks like, after a decade and a half, the dark days are past in Western New York. And the roster as currently constructed is built to do more than just get into the playoffs \u2014 it’s built to make noise when that time comes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Buffalo Sabres have been one of the big surprises of the 2025-26 National Hockey League campaign, currently…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":491914,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5100],"tags":[1107,229,5133,5,4,548,1108],"class_list":{"0":"post-491913","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-buffalo-sabres","8":"tag-buffalo","9":"tag-buffalo-sabres","10":"tag-buffalosabres","11":"tag-hockey","12":"tag-nhl","13":"tag-nhl-trade-deadline","14":"tag-sabres"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116189838572303455","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=491913"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491913\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/491914"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=491913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=491913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=491913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}