BUFFALO, N.Y. — Alex Tuch was still sitting at his locker stall in the Buffalo Sabres’ dressing room more than 20 minutes after Alex Newhook’s shot dipped under Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen’s glove and ended the Sabres’ season. He’d taken off his skates, but the rest of his gear was still on. The 3-2 overtime loss in Game 7 against the Montreal Canadiens was still so fresh. He looked around the room with a blank stare, and was the last player to peel off his jersey.Tuch, who finished this series without a point, was the last Sabre off the ice, too. After Newhook’s goal sent the home fans into a silent shock. After the Canadiens had piled on top of each other to celebrate on Buffalo’s ice. After players had gone through the handshake line. And after they’d taken a moment to salute the fans, who were chanting, “Let’s Go Buffalo!” When he finally stepped off the ice, Beck Malenstyn wrapped his arm around Tuch and they walked to the locker room together.Tuch grew up cheering for the Sabres and joined the team via trade in 2021. His arrival was the start of Buffalo’s latest rebuild, and his enthusiasm for the city and the franchise endured through multiple playoff-less seasons. This was the final year of his contract. Monday night could have been the last time he skated off that ice with that jersey on.In those ways, his heartbreak was unique, but he wasn’t alone. In the dressing room, Luukkonen’s eyes were still red with tears when he came out to speak with reporters. Captain Rasmus Dahlin sat at his locker stunned. Tage Thompson’s voice was hushed when speaking to reporters.“You look around the room after a loss like that and you feel pain,” Thompson said. “You just see all of the guys and all of the sacrifices and hard work they’ve put into this season, not for themselves but for the guy sitting next to them.“I think everyone in the room felt like we were winning that game. I don’t really know how else to say it.”The Sabres had so many chances to win. After falling behind 2-0 early on a goal that deflected off a skate and a power-play goal from Zachary Bolduc, the Sabres worked their way back into the game. Just like they did after falling behind 3-1 in Game 6, the Sabres kept pushing. But the goals didn’t come as easily, with Canadiens goalie Jakub Dobeš stopping 37 of the 39 shots he faced.Dahlin got the game-tying goal 6:27 into the third period, and it felt like the Sabres had a game winner in them somewhere. They finished with 90 shot attempts and 42 scoring chances at five-on-five. Midway through the third period, Malenstyn tapped in a loose puck after Jordan Greenway whacked it free, but the goal was called back. Chance after chance fell by the wayside, and it was Newhook, who had six goals in this series, who scored the winner on Montreal’s third shot of overtime.“One shot decides the whole season,” Dahlin said. “It sucks.”When Sabres coach Lindy Ruff was walking off the ice, he waved in every direction to the fans. Then he started clapping as they continued to cheer the team. When Ruff, 66, took this job, he wanted to bring playoff hockey back to Buffalo. He wanted to see the city he has called home for more than 40 years fall in love with its hockey team again. That’s why when he walked into the devastated dressing room after the game, he was only thinking about one thing.“It hurts,” Ruff said. “I told the team it hurts. That pain won’t go away, but I won’t let this one game define the season we had. I told the players how proud I was of them. The battle we took into Game 6 in Montreal and then came back here and gave ourselves every chance to win. This one game doesn’t define our season for us.“This was a giant step for us, a giant step for all of the players to get a feel for what it’s really like to be proud of being a Buffalo Sabre, to be proud of playing here. I took the job and I thought, No. 1, I want these guys to like being a Buffalo Sabre. I think they like being a Buffalo Sabre. I think they did our city proud. It wasn’t the result we wanted. To a man they’re all disappointed. But they gave them everything they had in the tank.”The picture of that devastation will be the last image of the 2025-26 Sabres, but it won’t be the lasting image. This team went from last place in the Atlantic Division in December to first place by the end of the regular season. A team that was an afterthought in the playoff picture came an overtime goal away from a trip to the Eastern Conference final.More than that, though, this team reinvigorated a fan base that had been beaten down by 15 years without playoff hockey. In 2024-25, the Sabres had four sellouts total. In 2022-23 and 2023-24, the Sabres averaged fewer than 16,000 fans per game. On a Tuesday night in late October with the Columbus Blue Jackets in town, there were 4,000 empty seats at KeyBank Center. The business of hockey was bleak for this team. Fans came to the rink with paper bags on their heads. They repeatedly chanted for the general manager to be fired. At one point, they chanted for Terry Pegula to sell the team.On Monday night, they were chanting, “Just f—ing go!” repeating what Ruff told the team ahead of Game 6. The “Sabres on the warpath!” chants returned with a vengeance. The entire city was buzzing with energy anticipating Game 7. These are the days and moments this team brought back to a hockey-wild city. They helped Buffalo fall in love with its hockey team again.“The energy in the city, the energy around our team again, I’m so proud of our fans,” Ruff said. “I know this hurts them just as much as it hurts us. The energy around our team, around the city, in this building, outside the building — this was the first time our players have gotten to experience something like this. I couldn’t be more proud of the way our city represented themselves with our play.”Darcy Regier was Sabres GM the last time the team reached the conference finals in 2007. After leading the franchise from June 1997 to November 2013, Regier has stayed away from making public comments during the team’s difficult journey without any playoff berths, which included four GM hires since he left. It hurt him to see Sabres fans have to go through that.But seeing the Sabres renaissance this season, and their playoff run, has been something he’s enjoyed on many levels.“Buffalo is a great hockey town!” Regier told The Athletic via text message. “The fans there have stayed loyal through a long stretch, and they deserve every bit of this. I’m genuinely happy for them.“And there is a special feeling for the people who are still or again part of that organization — Lindy and others I had the privilege of working alongside.”That feeling was shared around the hockey world. Ryan Miller, whose number is in the rafters in Buffalo, told The Athletic via text, “I’m really happy to see the energy and excitement return to the waterfront. The city is buzzing and for good reason.”Miller’s old teammate Daniel Briere echoed that.“My first thoughts go to the passionate Sabres fans who have supported this team for so long through a lot of frustrating years,” the Philadelphia Flyers GM told The Athletic via text message. “It’s good to see them get rewarded with some postseason success.”And Don Granato, who coached these Sabres from 2021-2024, watched players like Tuch, Thompson and Dahlin deal with the weight of the playoff drought. He saw behind the scenes how much they cared.“They earned this, it was not easy for them,” Granato, coaching Team USA at the men’s IIHF world championship, said over the phone Monday from Switzerland. “The fanbase is incredible, but (the players) also felt the demand of it, I can tell you that. It hurt them that they couldn’t do more sooner. It affected them, I think on a psychological level. Because they cared. So I’m really excited for them, very, very excited. Because I know what they went through, I know they wanted to do this for a bigger thing than themselves.”That’s why the pain was so deep for the Sabres players in those first moments after the season ended. All Dahlin could muster in describing his emotions was, “I don’t know. F—ing sucks.”The big picture is hard to see after a loss like this. This is a team the city is proud of, one with a bright future and one that accomplished more than most people thought possible back in September. Dahlin was having a hard time appreciating all of that after the game. All he could think about was Newhook’s puck knuckling by him and into the net, ending his season.“Not right now,” Dahlin said when asked to reflect on what this team accomplished. “Tomorrow I’ll appreciate more things.”