The Sabres hosted the Calgary Flames in Buffalo last night for a bout between two squads who have struggled mightily this season. Calgary posted its highest goal total yet, winning convincingly by a score of 6-2. The red team improved to 6-13-3, but remains in the basement of league standings along with Buffalo.

Both teams have had a rough go of it, not just this season but in the 21st century as a whole. As a result, the Sabres have garnered a fairly regrettable reputation around the NHL, but there are actually quite a few parallels between Calgary and Buffalo over the last 25 years.

The Sabres are widely regarded as somewhat of a cursed franchise due to their lack of success since the turn of the century, and a cautionary tale of what can go wrong when embarking on a full-scale rebuild, that is, digging a hole you can’t pull yourself out of.

It’s no secret that Buffalo has had minimal playoff success. They’ve missed the playoffs in each of the last 14 seasons and had little to be proud of prior to their current drought. The Flames aren’t riding a schneid quite like the Sabres; nobody is, but Calgary’s recent track record in the playoffs is equally disheartening.

Since the year 2000, both teams have each won just five playoff series.

For what its worth, Calgary has had more regular-season success, two 50-win campaigns and three division championships, but Buffalo has trailed closely behind with just one fewer of each milestone.

The Flames can hang their hat on their 10 playoff appearances to the Sabres’ five, but that’s the lone category in which they’ve separated themselves over the last quarter-century.

Neither team has been able to sustain much relevance within the league at any point throughout the last couple of decades.

But the similarities go far beyond a lack of success on paper. The nature in which these organizations have gotten to where they are now virtually mirrors each other.

Calgary’s mishandling of Matthew Tkachuk starkly resembles that of the Jack Eichel debacle in Buffalo. Both players represented a beacon of hope for their ailing franchises at one time or another. Both players forced their way out in search of greener pastures and subsequently became the focal point of their new club’s successful pursuit of Stanley Cups.

In fact, neither club has had much success in retaining talent that they have found in the draft, or getting anything of substantial value back for them.

In 2022, the Flames dealt Tkachuk to the Florida Panthers for Jonathan Huberdeau, Mackenzie Weegar, Cole Schwindt and a conditional first-round selection. In 2021, Eichel, along with a third-rounder, went to the Vegas Golden Knights in return for Peyton Krebs, Alex Tuch, a first and a second-round pick. Though both returns seemed satisfactory at the time, neither haul has equated to much, with the Panthers and Golden Knights reaping the most benefit from the deals.

Both Calgary and Buffalo have had their fair share of difficulty attracting free agents, with poor facilities and investment into the team being key factors.

They also share a similar head coaching history since the 2000-01 season, employing countless faces behind the bench. Outside of Lindy Ruff’s 16-year reign in Buffalo from 1997 to 2013, neither team has had the same head coach for longer than four years.

Darryl Sutter, former Calgary head coach and Ruff, the Sabres’ current bench boss, both returned for renaissance tenures with their respective clubs in the 2020s. Hoping to reclaim some of the success they had in their initial stints, in which they reached the Stanley Cup Finals and fell short.

Sutter’s second term didn’t amount to much, resulting in his firing in 2023, and Buffalo continues to spin its wheels under Ruff, who may be on the hot seat once again, sooner rather than later.

The parallels really are jarring. As far as professional hockey goes, Buffalo could be considered Calgary’s sister-city in the east, with the only real difference between them over the last two and a half decades being the conferences they reside in.

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