Between the years of 2014-2016, it felt like the Toronto Maple Leafs and Buffalo Sabres were destined to spark a rivalry that they haven’t really had in their history, despite being a quick trip down the QEW from each other. The Sabres were dominant for a good chunk of the 2000s, a time of which the Leafs were routinely near the bottom of the league, but after the Sabres made the playoffs for the last time to this day, which was in 2011, they came back to earth and both teams battled their own demons for a few years. Following the 2013-14 season, both teams made the decision to kick off a formal rebuild and both teams saw themselves picking in the top-10, and in some cases, the top-5, over the course of the next three drafts.

In 2014, the Sabres drafted Sam Reinhart second overall while the Maple Leafs scooped up William Nylander at eighth overall. In 2015, Buffalo selected Jack Eichel second overall while the Maple Leafs took Mitch Marner at fourth. Then, the Maple Leafs won the draft lottery and selected Auston Matthews first overall in 2016 while the Sabres took Alex Nylander at eighth overall, the same slot the Maple Leafs took his older brother two years prior. All of a sudden, both teams had a fresh new core of players and a path forward full of hope. Matthews and Eichel going head to head as franchise number-one centres, the Nylander brothers competing against each other, and Marner and Reinhart as your complementary players? It really seemed like there was going to be a turn of the tide for both teams.

Well, it didn’t play out that way.

The Leafs, as we all know, put together a talented regular season team that made the playoffs every year from Matthews and Marner’s rookie season. Their playoff success in that time has been minimal, with only two round wins to speak of in those nine years, but ask a Sabres fan how their experience has been for the past decade and they’d probably take the Leafs’ experience over what they’ve had to endure in Buffalo since then.

While the Leafs made it nine years before losing one of those core players they drafted in that span between 2014-2016, the Sabres didn’t last that long. They sat there spinning their tires before reaching a point where they figured their only option was to start over, again. Reinhart was traded to the Florida Panthers following the 2020-21 season where he blossomed into a routine 30-goal scorer, even notching a 57-goal campaign in 2023-24, and he went on to win two Cups with Florida. Eichel was traded to the Vegas Golden Knights in the same offseason, where he won a Cup in his second season with the Golden Knights. As for Alex Nylander, well, he’s currently on an AHL contract with the Toronto Marlies, the Maple Leafs’ affiliate.

While the top of the Atlantic Division has been dominated by the Maple Leafs, Panthers, Tampa Bay Lightning, and Boston Bruins for much of the past half-decade, teams like the Ottawa Senators and Montreal Canadiens have started to take legitimate strides. Both of those teams made the playoffs last season, and even the Detroit Red Wings have come close to making the dance a few times. The Sabres, meanwhile, have been operating with no real direction, supported further by yet another lackadaisical offseason. All they did to improve their roster was re-acquire depth forward Sam Lafferty and acquire defenceman Conor Timmins from the Pittsburgh Penguins (both former Leafs, funny enough).

The glimmer of hope that the Sabres have working in their favour is how young their team is. They’re led by Zach Benson, Josh Norris, and Jiri Kulich up front, with Owen Power, Bowen Byram, and Rasmus Dahlin on the back end. Dahlin and Norris are the oldest of the bunch here at 26 years old, so they’ve got the potential, but two questions remain. Number one, is their supporting cast of veterans (Alex Tuch, Jason Zucker, and Tage Thompson) good enough to keep them out of the bottom of the standings? And number two, will their young players take enough of a step forward to keep them in the mix?

If the answers to both of these questions is yes, the Sabres might have a fighting chance at making some noise. But, they’re looking at three divisional opponents who have their sights set on a Cup (Toronto, Florida, Tampa Bay), two opponents who are looking to build momentum off of their playoff berths last season (Montreal and Ottawa), one opponent looking to avoid slipping into the non-playoff tier (Boston) and one opponent in a similar boat to them in the Detroit Red Wings, who are desperate to give the fans of their storied franchise something to cheer for beyond April. It’s going to be an uphill battle for them, to say the least, and their fans have already been stripped of any patience they may have had left.

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