2026 Stanley Cup Playoffs: Sabres vs. Bruins series preview

	Game	Time (ET)
TBD	1. Boston at Buffalo	TBD
TBD	2. Boston at Buffalo	TBD
TBD	3. Buffalo at Boston	TBD
TBD	4. Buffalo at Boston	TBD
*TBD	5. Boston at Buffalo	TBD
*TBD	6. Buffalo at Boston	TBD
*TBD	7. Boston at Buffalo	TBD

*If Necessary

The Skinny

Are we dreaming? No. It’s really happening. The last time the Buffalo Sabres made the Stanley Cup playoffs, Barack Obama was partway through his first term as U.S. President, Game of Thrones season 1 episode 1 was a few days away from premiering, and Terry Pegula had owned Western New York’s NHL franchise for two months.

The 14-season playoff drought was the longest in NHL history, and it’s over. Buffalo qualifies for the first time since 2010-11, and the feat is all the more staggering given where this team sat in mid-December. The Sabres were trending toward laughingstock status once again, languishing at the bottom of the Eastern Conference, so fed up with losing that they fired GM Kevyn Adams Dec. 15. But they had commenced a modest three-game winning streak before the news broke and, once Jarmo Kekalainen slid into the GM chair, the heater grew to 10 games in a row. Buffalo exploded into the playoff race and truly never looked back. From the start of the streak, the Sabres put together a 39-9-4 record, easily pacing the NHL in wins and points percentage. Playing hard for their emotional leader, defenseman Rasmus Dahlin, they emerged as one of the NHL’s deepest, most cohesive clubs and won their first division title since 2009-10. Will they carry their momentum into the postseason, or will they have to fend off the relief of merely getting there?

While the Sabres opened 2025-26 as the league’s longest-suffering franchise, the Bruins were just getting used to suffering. Their playoff drought was 1.0 seasons. They’d committed to a retool the previous spring, trading away longtime core players such as Brad Marchand, Charlie Coyle and Brandon Carlo. They still had a strong group of prime-year players to build around in David Pastrnak, Charlie McAvoy and Jeremy Swayman but understood they needed to take a step back to go forward. The 28th-overall finish allowed them to draft mega-prospect James Hagens seventh overall last June.

After a modest flurry of depth roster additions and little else from GM Don Sweeney last offseason, the Bruins seemed set to lay low another year and accumulate assets. But everything went ahead of schedule. Swayman had a bounce-back year in goal; Pastrnak delivered another superstar campaign; Morgan Geekie repeated last season’s improbable goal-scoring binge; new acquisition Viktor Arvidsson showed he wasn’t washed; rookie Fraser Minten had a breakout campaign; and several Bruins had career offensive years, from McAvoy to Pavel Zacha. The Bruins took well to new coach Marco Sturm, who preaches a strong work ethic but also connects emotionally with his players. All those factors combined to propel Boston back into the playoffs after the one-year break. They’re clear underdogs against the juggernaut Sabres but carry quite a bit more experience.

Head to Head

Buffalo: 1-1-2
Boston: 3-1-0

Before your eyes widen too much at the H2H records: Boston’s first two wins came in October, when the Sabres were still in sad-sack mode, and the second of them relied on a 37-save effort from backup goalie Joonas Korpisalo to beat Buffalo in overtime in a game where Buffalo had more than 73 percent of the 5-on-5 expected goals. The Sabres took the third game as win No. 8 of the epic 10-game streak, and in the fourth it was Korpisalo again, oddly enough, beating Buffalo in a back-and-forth overtime thriller in late March. Main takeaway here: the season series was pretty close.

Top Five Scorers

Buffalo

Tage Thompson, 81 pts
Rasmus Dahlin, 74 pts
Alex Tuch, 65 pts
Ryan McLeod, 54 pts
Josh Doan, 52 pts

Boston

David Pastrnak, 100 pts
Morgan Geekie, 68 pts
Pavel Zacha, 65 pts
Charlie McAvoy, 61 pts
Viktor Arvidsson, 54 pts

Offense

No one doubts the credentials of center Tage Thompson and defenseman Dahlin as all-world talents. Thompson has delivered his third 40-goal season and gets in goalies’ heads with his elite one-timer on the power play. Dahlin is a great all-around blueliner, not just an offensive dynamo, but his puck-moving ability is sublime. Still – depth is what makes Buffalo dangerous above all. The Sabres didn’t pepper the top of the Art Ross Trophy leaderboard this season, but they have 13 players with double-digit goal totals and five 20-goal scorers.

The Sabres’ lineup really sings when Josh Norris is healthy, because they roll three legitimately dangerous scoring lines when he and Ryan McLeod work the middle-six center spots behind Thompson. Having Peyton Krebs and Tuch with Thompson, Jason Zucker and Jack Quinn between McLeod and Zach Benson and Doan with Norris, or any similar permutations, makes the Sabres extremely hard to match up against. McLeod and Benson are great facilitators, Doan, acquired from the Utah Mammoth last summer, had a breakout season with 25 goals, and he alone matched the player he and Michael Kesselring were traded for in JJ Peterka. Buffalo also gets a lot of help from its defense; the top four of Dahlin, Mattias Samuelsson, Bowen Byram and Owen Power have combined for 51 goals this season.

So while the Sabres aren’t star-studded all over their lineup, they’re a top-five club in the NHL in goals per game, albeit with a mid-pack power play, which can be attributed to having just one elite finisher in Thompson. Their play driving at 5-on-5 is merely average, however; the goal total is buoyed by the NHL’s fourth-best 5-on-5 shooting percentage since the Dec. 9 run began.

Boston’s scoring was a pleasant surprise in 2025-26. Pastrnak’s brilliance was a given; only four NHL players have more points across the past five seasons. But he got more help from teammates than many prognosticators expected he would. Geekie was supposed to be the grinder turned scorer with an unsustainable shooting percentage, but it only “regressed” from 22.00 to 21.5 percent, and his goal total jumped from 33 to 39. Zacha scored 30 goals for the first time in his career. Arvidsson was acquired from the Edmonton Oilers for a fifth-round pick as a pure $4-million salary dump but proved to have far more game left in his small, scrappy frame than expected. Perhaps reuniting with his former Los Angeles Kings assistant coach in Sturm made the difference, as Arvidsson reached 25 goals for the first time since 2022-23. The Bruins rank a respectable 11^th in goals per game and boast a top-10 power play in the NHL. They also have a fascinating wild card for this series in Hagens, a dynamic two-way center who turned pro after ending his career at Boston College and debuted for the Bruins last week.

On the whole, though, the Bruins’ play driving underwhelms; they sit in the bottom half of the NHL in 5-on-5 scoring chances, high-danger chances and expected goals per 60. They’ve outperformed their metrics more than the Sabres have this season.

Defense

Both teams have a lot of talented defensive players on paper. The Sabres’ top four brings a ton of size and mobility, with Dahlin standing out of course as one of the league’s true workhorses, typically playing with Samuelsson. That duo mostly plays break-even defense at 5-on-5 in terms of chance suppression, but Buffalo outscored opponents 46-29 with Dahlin and Samuelsson on the ice this season. Dahlin is such a weapon with his 84^th percentile shot power and 82^nd percentile max skating speed, blended with his vision, competitiveness and leadership. He’s one of the most dominant blueliners in the game. As a second pair, Byram and Power bring lots of additional skating ability, and coach Lindy Ruff has many combinations he can use for a third pair between Kesselring, Logan Stanley, Luke Schenn, Zach Metsa and Conor Timmins. The Sabres have their share of defensively responsible forwards, too, the standout being McLeod, whose five shorthanded goals lead the NHL, and underrated play driver Benson.

Buffalo has a top-five penalty kill in the NHL and the 11^th-lowest goals-against average in the NHL, but this is a mediocre team in its own end overall. The Sabres sit in the middle third at 5-on-5 in preventing scoring chances, high-danger chances and expected goals.

Luckily for them, their opponent is far worse. These aren’t the smothering Patrice Bergeron era Bruins anymore. Boston has an expected goal differential of -18.34, 28^th-best in the NHL, down there with the Draft Lottery teams and easily the worst of the entire 2025-26 playoff field. Only four teams allow more high-danger chances per game than Boston at 5-on-5. McAvoy still holds his own in extremely tough minutes as a net-positive defensive player, but Hampus Lindholm is the lone Bruins regular on defense this season to have a positive on-ice scoring chance differential at 5-on-5.

Boston also has the NHL’s 24^th-best penalty kill at 77.0 percent, which is an alarming stat to combine with leading the NHL in times shorthanded. The Bruins should’ve given up far more goals than they did this season but were rescued by their goaltending.

Goaltending

From Alex Lyon to Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen to Colten Ellis, multiple Sabres goalies had their moments throughout 2025-26. The sum of Buffalo’s parts in net was positive; all three graded out decisively above average in goals saved above expected per 60. Lyon and Luukkonen alternated starts for much of this season when both were healthy at the same time, but ‘UPL’ pulled away down the stretch. From the Olympic break onward, he went 11-2-1 with a .918 save percentage, whereas Lyon went 6-2-1 with an .881 SV%. Luukkonen, a late-blooming former elite prospect, has earned the net for Game 1. But Buffalo has excellent insurance behind him in Lyon (once back healthy) and Ellis.

It’s a good thing, because Swayman represents Boston’s best chance to steal this series. The last time the Bruins made the playoffs, 2023-24, Swayman led the NHL with a .933 SV% across 12 appearances. After he was maligned for a slow start and down year in 2024-25 following contract negotiations that dragged into training camp, he’s been dialled in this season. Among goalies who started at least half their teams’ games, Swayman leads the NHL in goals saved above expected per 60. He’s been as good as any netminder in the game. Even if he falters or gets hurt, the Bruins can turn to a guy who’s beaten Buffalo twice this season in Korpisalo.

Injuries

Buffalo is pretty banged up, at least lower in its lineup, to open the postseason. Lyon’s late-season lower-body injury will hold him out for at least the start of the series, so Ellis will back up Luukkonen. The Sabres also won’t have feisty checker Sam Carrick back from his arm injury yet; he was an absolute revelation after coming over from the New York Rangers at the Trade Deadline and is sorely missed. Rookie center Noah Ostlund (upper body) will likely miss Game 1, and sophomore pivot Jiri Kulich is done for the year with a blood-clot issue. Checking forward Justin Danforth remains out indefinitely with a broken kneecap.

The Bruins, on the other hand, are completely healthy. Their injury report is a clean sheet.

Intangibles

KeyBank Center will surge with emotion for Game 1 as the playoff drought officially ends. The Sabres will be fired up. Ruff is back behind the bench just as he was for the last playoff game in 2011. Will the vibe factor work in their favor? Or will the adrenaline give way to nerves?

From Thompson to Dahlin to Luukkonen to Power, so many of Buffalo’s core players have never seen playoff action. On the Boston side, Pastrnak and McAvoy have been to Game 7 of a Stanley Cup Final, while Swayman has far more playoff starts than every Sabres goalie combined. If the Bruins snatch Game 1, will the Sabres’ confidence waver?

X-Factor

Schenn has only suited up for three games since the Sabres acquired him from the Winnipeg Jets. He’s not even guaranteed to dress against Boston. But Schenn has two Stanley Cup rings and is known for fostering camaraderie with his strong dressing-room presence. If the Sabres go down in the series early, he can be a sounding board for their young stars.

Speaking of young stars: Hagens could be a sneaky weapon for Boston, particularly because his sample size in the NHL is tiny at just two games and his opponents thus haven’t seen a ton of him. While the Sabres key on the Bruins’ top two lines, Hagens’ speed could make him a tricky matchup to handle in the bottom six, playing on a kid line with Minten and Marat Khusnutdinov. Hagens could also be interesting on a scoring line if Sturm changes things up.

Series Prediction

The Sabres have been the winningest team in the NHL for the past four months. They’re deep, they seem to have quite a bonded dressing room, and they’re hungry. Is it possible there’s an adrenaline dump after finally making the playoffs and that they experience a learning curve in higher-stakes games? Sure. But the Bruins aren’t talented enough to take advantage. Swayman should help them steal a game, maybe two, but their defensive shortcomings will be their undoing.

Sabres in five games.

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