The problem with mythmaking is that the myth needs constant feeding, and each dish must be spicier and more exotic than the last. Fortunately for the Buffalo Sabres, they seem to get how it’s supposed to be done.
It is no longer enough to cite the 15 years in which they haven't mattered, or how they worst-to-firsted between December and April, or that the man who built the roster, general manager Kevyn Adams, had to be fired for that roster to finally get the idea that suck is not a permanent state. Buffalo is now the representative of cool kids everywhere because narratives have to eat, too.
But until Sunday, the enduring truth of the Cup was always lingering in the background—that cool only gets you past the national anthem, and then you get serious, one crosscheck at a time. Buffalo was a team with an excellent record, a revivified fan base and a roster full of playoff neophytes playing against the Boston Bruins, who always seem like a tough postseason out even when they don't make the postseason at all.
And maybe that's how this plays out in the end, because as the noted philosopher/raconteur/sour-candy face Darryl Sutter once said, "There's no such thing as momentum." But until it ends, it rides, and the Sabres took the first of their 16 potential steps to becoming a miracle team by performing a bit of dramatic misdirection in their first game.
They took the ice Sunday evening and promptly had it taken back in the one true way seventh seeds steal from the powerful: goaltending. Jeremy Swayman, who has been the goalie of the future in Boston for five years now, cheated Buffalo for two full periods and half of the third, steering away 32 shots and giving his mates enough time to take a 2-0 lead and suck most of the air out of the building by reminding the customers that in the postseason the goalies do the talking. The magic of their four-month run was being dope-slapped by the oldest verity in the books: You can't celebrate a goal without a goal.
But just as that depressing lesson was being imparted, the Sabres remembered that two periods of inertia is nothing compared to 15 years of it, and decided to be the version of themselves they'd known since Christmas. First, restaurant refrigerator–sized centerpiece Tage Thompson pulled them back into the game with a wraparound that caught Swayman in mid-befuddle with eight minutes left.
Thompson struck again, using his Inspector Gadget arms to take a pass from veteran Alex Tuch, outfought Boston defenseman Andrew Peeke to take it out front, and caught Swayman with his right pad off the ice with 4:16 left. Then Mattias Samuelsson found space inside the left circle and converted Jack Quinn's pass 52 seconds later to make it 3-2, and suddenly the team that just learned how to stop being dead sprang to full life to steal a game they dominated but could not figure out how to own. A perfectly comprehensible end to a game that had life-lessons-for-young'uns written all over it.
Now this only works as metaphor if it leads to something longer-lasting, and that is all done with the use of the rearview mirror. The Sabres have done relatively nothing in terms of Cup acquisition, but it beats getting smothered 2-0 at home and killing the vibe that only drinking a beer from a three-foot-long plastic sabre in 36-degree weather can provide. Instead, they even caught Western movie sidekick impersonator and coach Lindy Ruff by surprise with their full-throated buy-in during the comeback, because most Stanley Cup stories end in disappointment by the nature of the format—16 enter, 15 don't come out the other end. And nobody wants to fully invest in the worst-to-first narrative, because that never happens.
Except, of course, seven years ago, when it happened almost that way to St. Louis: The Blues went from being one of the worst teams in the game at Thanksgiving to winning it all, and the only difference was that they fired their coach (Mike Yeo) rather than their general manager, which is the more traditional panic move. In other words, the Sabres have a historically valid reason to believe in their best destiny rather than the more well-traveled "too dumb to know they can't" canard.
But to truly build a myth, one has to steal results that aren't rightfully theirs from time to time, and this was the first one on their card. Now they only have to do it 15 more times over the next two months to turn a myth into a movie.
