{"id":539906,"date":"2026-04-04T07:06:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-04T07:06:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/539906\/"},"modified":"2026-04-04T07:06:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-04T07:06:08","slug":"the-sabres-did-not-clinch-a-playoff-berth-thursday-night-what-comes-next","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/539906\/","title":{"rendered":"The Sabres did not clinch a playoff berth Thursday night. What comes next?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Buffalo had an opportunity to secure a berth in the Stanley Cup playoffs on Thursday night. It didn&#8217;t happen. So, what comes next?<\/p>\n<p>BUFFALO, N.Y. \u2014 The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wgrz.com\/sabres\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">Buffalo Sabres<\/a> had an opportunity to secure a berth in the Stanley Cup playoffs on Thursday night.<\/p>\n<p>It didn&#8217;t happen. The Sabres must wait to end their postseason drought, which dates back to the 2010-11 season, following their 4-1 road loss to the Ottawa Senators.<\/p>\n<p>The Sabres entered the day with a 46-21-8 record and 100 points, sitting atop the Atlantic Division, two points up on Tampa Bay. The Lightning also played on Thursday night, beating Pittsburgh Penguins 6-3 and climbing back into a first-place tie in the division.<\/p>\n<p>RELATED: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wgrz.com\/article\/sports\/nhl\/sabres\/buffalo-sabres-last-nhl-stanley-cup-playoff-appearance\/71-282c2ebc-6f4c-4d1c-9bed-e105d62a3e96\" class=\"cms__embed-related-story__link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Do you remember the last time the Sabres played a postseason game?<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Buffalo&#8217;s next chance to punch its postseason ticket comes Saturday night at Washington.<\/p>\n<p>The Sabres&#8217; last postseason game happened on April 26, 2011, when they lost a Game 7 in an Eastern Conference quarterfinal series in Philadelphia. The Flyers scored the first four goals and eliminated Buffalo that night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Buffalo had an opportunity to secure a berth in the Stanley Cup playoffs on Thursday night. It didn&#8217;t&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":539907,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5100],"tags":[1107,229,5133,5,4,1108],"class_list":{"0":"post-539906","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-sabres"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116345179187140700","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539906","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=539906"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539906\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/539907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=539906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=539906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=539906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}