Sabres' playoff quest begins at home against Rangers

The Buffalo Sabres own the NHL's longest playoff drought and last year came tantalizingly close to ending it.

This time, the Sabres hope to do enough in the regular season to qualify for the postseason for the first time since 2010-11. They begin a season of raised expectations Thursday night when they host the New York Rangers, who are playing their first game under new coach Peter Laviolette.

The Sabres were 42-33-7 last season and finished with 91 points but wound up one point behind the Florida Panthers for the final playoff berth in the Eastern Conference. It was their most points and wins since getting 96 and going 43-29-10 in 2010-11. Last season ended with a 9-2-1 run over their final 12 games after an early eight-game losing streak spoiled a 7-3-0 start.

Buffalo enters its third full season under coach Don Granato after scoring 293 goals, which ranked third in the NHL. Tage Thompson scored 47 goals and finished with 94 points, while linemates Jeff Skinner and Alex Tuch totaled 82 and 79 points, respectively. The Sabres also bring back one of the league's top defensemen in Rasmus Dahlin, who signed an eight-year extension earlier this week after posting 15 goals and 73 points a year ago.

"We have really high expectations on ourselves," Dahlin told reporters earlier this week. "That's the main thing. And to have the window open, it's go time. I mean we don't have excuses anymore. We've shown that we can play against the best teams in this league and at the end of the last year, we were playing really good hockey when we had to."

The Rangers had raised expectations a year ago after a surprising run to the Eastern Conference finals in 2021-22. While New York finished with 107 points, they did not end the season well and lost in seven games to the New Jersey Devils in the opening round of the playoffs after winning the first two games.

New York opened the series with a pair of 5-1 road victories but got outscored 15-7 the rest of the series. Shortly after the series ended on May 1 with a 4-0 loss in New Jersey, the Rangers fired coach Gerard Gallant after two seasons and replaced him with Laviolette.

Laviolette is coaching his sixth team and spent the past three seasons with the Washington Capitals. He also won a Stanley Cup with the Carolina Hurricanes in 2006, reached the Stanley Cup final with the Philadelphia Flyers in 2010 and with the Nashville Predators in 2017. During a 1-5-0 preseason, various players noted the differences in approaches between him and Gallant.

"I think last year it was a little more laid-back, and I think we were maybe not as prepared as we should have been going into the first little bit of the season," New York center Vincent Trocheck told reporters "It's been a little bit tougher camp, for sure. I think guys are definitely going to be in shape coming out of it. And I think we're focused on the details a little bit more."

Laviolette is taking over the helm of a mostly established team since stars Mika Zibanejad, Artemi Panarin and Chris Kreider return after combining for 104 goals. The Rangers made tweaks along the margins by adding seven free agents on one-year deals, notably right wing Blake Wheeler, who totaled 55 points last season with the Winnipeg Jets.