'This is the place' | Dahlin, Thompson reflect on journey to playoffs

Love when players are honest. > “I think we’ve had that conversation maybe 10, 15 times, honestly,” Dahlin told Sabres.com. “There’s a lot of people that have come in here and tried to change it, and then they leave. But to be the ones that really, really are trying every single year, and eventually you’re a big piece of that change. That’s bigger than a lot of things. Me and Tage, we’ve just manifested it or whatever, talked about how that feeling would be, and it’s indescribable, honestly. > “There’s so many guys that have asked out or don’t want to be here. But we said to each other, ‘This is the place. We’re not leaving. We have to turn this around.’ It’s a crazy feeling.” > “Me and Dahls, we came in at the same time,” Thompson said. “A lot of other guys were here too that came and went. Guys before us, even, and a lot of good players, too. That was something we always talked about. You see those guys go on and have success, and sometimes it stirs up in your mind, ‘Well, what would happen if I left?’ > “We always agreed that it’d be really special to be the guys that turned it around here. Fourteen-year playoff drought, whatever it’s been. To be the guys that brought playoff hockey back to Buffalo is something that was a big goal for us.” > “Tommer and Ras have been here longer than me, but there have been some dark times, for sure, and a lot of down moments where you don’t know how we’re gonna get out of it, or what’s gonna happen,” said Mattias Samuelsson, who was drafted one day after Dahlin and made his Sabres debut in 2021. > “Going through it and seeing the light at the end of the tunnel now, and seeing the guys you’ve been battling with and in the trenches with for five-plus years, do it as a group together, I think it makes it way more special, for sure. It feels rewarding to be one of the guys who has been in it from the beginning of, I would say, this Sabres era. It’s a sense of accomplishment, I would say, that we finally did it. Did it with the guys that we’ve been in the trenches with.” submitted by /u/DecentLurker96 [link] [comments]