He Sat There in Full Uniform

Buffalo had just lost Game 7 of the second round to Montreal, 3-2 in overtime. The run that finally ended 14 years of waiting was over. Most of the Sabres had already cleared out of the dressing room. Alex Tuch was still sitting at his locker in full uniform.

"I didn't want to take that sweater off," he explained in June.

He'd asked his camp to put contract talks on pause during the playoffs, so he didn't know what was coming next. He just had a feeling that night might be the last time he'd wear the Sabres crest. So he sat with it for a while. He later described it as one of the hardest moments he's ever lived through.

His feeling turned out to be right. In late June, Buffalo signed Tuch and traded him to the Washington Capitals in a sign-and-trade, getting back a third-round draft pick. He signed for eight years and $84 million.

On Saturday, Oct. 24, Tuch sees his old teammates from the other bench for the first time. The puck drops at 7 p.m. at Capital One Arena in Washington.

The Kid From Baldwinsville

To get why this one hits different around here, you have to start in Baldwinsville, the town outside Syracuse where Tuch grew up, about 150 miles from KeyBank Center. He didn't learn to love the Sabres once he got here. He loved them first. He went to games as a kid, owned the jerseys, and grew up next to Tim Connolly, who played in Buffalo for years.

When Vegas traded him to Buffalo on Nov. 4, 2021, as part of the blockbuster that sent Jack Eichel to the Golden Knights, Tuch couldn't stop smiling about the post-lockout Sabres teams of 2006 and 2007 he'd watched growing up. "I was a big Sabres fan growing up," he said. The team even shared photos of him wearing its old red jersey, and he joked that he wanted it brought back.

His coach back then, Don Granato, pointed out that Tuch used to be one of the fans in the seats, hoping someday to wear the sweater himself. Now he was in the room.

He didn't arrive as a finished product. Minnesota drafted him 18th overall in 2014, and he played just six games there before Vegas took him in the 2017 expansion draft. In four seasons with the Golden Knights he put up 61 goals and 78 assists in 249 regular-season games, added 19 goals in 66 playoff games, and reached the Stanley Cup Final in 2018. But it was in Buffalo that he grew into a first-line winger, a 30-goal scorer three times, including each of his last two seasons, and one of the better two-way forwards in the league. He's credited Tage Thompson, a friend since their teenage days in the U.S. national program, with helping him learn how to score.

Fourteen Long Years

Before last spring, Buffalo's last playoff game came in April 2011. Then came 14 straight seasons on the outside, the longest playoff drought in NHL history. Tuch was adamant that his group would be the one to end it.

In December, the Sabres reeled off a 10-game winning streak. Tuch said later that during that run he figured a contract extension was coming any day. The Sabres clinched a playoff spot in early April and went on to win the Atlantic Division.

Before Game 1 of the first round against Boston, Tuch couldn't keep the smile off his face in warmups. That night Buffalo trailed 2-0 in the third period and came back to win 4-3, with Tuch's empty-net goal standing as the winner. With chaos all around KeyBank Center, inside and out, he summed up what this city had been through: "Fourteen long years of heartbreak."

On May 1 in Boston, he scored 3:25 into Game 6, set up in front of the net by captain Rasmus Dahlin. It was his fourth goal of the playoffs. The Sabres won 4-1 and claimed their first playoff series win since 2007, when they knocked out the New York Rangers. Tuch's review afterward took one word: "Unbelievable."

The Sabres won all three of their road games in that series. Tuch had seven points in the six games against Boston, four goals and three assists, on the heels of a regular season with 33 goals and 66 points in 79 games. Alex Lyon made 25 saves in the clincher, and Tuch made a point afterward of praising the goaltending Buffalo got all series long.

One Goal Short

The second round against Montreal went the distance, and it was the toughest stretch of Tuch's time in Buffalo. Five games in, he had no points and was a minus-8, and with his contract set to expire, he didn't dodge any of it. "I feel like I've been easy to play against," he said after Game 5, adding that it wasn't his game and that he had to be better for the guys in that room. Buffalo won Game 6 in Montreal to force a seventh game, but Tuch never got on the scoresheet in the series. It ended with that 3-2 overtime loss in Game 7.

He hasn't ducked it. In a feature by The Athletic's Matthew Fairburn published Friday, Oct. 23, Tuch said he isn't sure he'll ever have full closure, because he'll always wish he'd done more on a certain play or in a certain moment. He also said he's proud to have been part of a team that pulled off something plenty of people called impossible.

He believes that group, one goal away from the conference final, would have given Carolina, the eventual Stanley Cup champion, a real fight. "I always wanted more," he said. "I always wish we did better."

A Business Decision Nobody Wanted

Tuch has kept most of the contract details to himself. He has said the Sabres made a late push to keep him and that he appreciated it. As talks with Buffalo faded, his agent sat down with Capitals general manager Chris Patrick and coach Spencer Carbery, and Tuch and his wife, Kylie, liked what they heard. The Capitals had battled injuries and missed the playoffs last season, but Tuch saw them as a hard team to play against, and the more he and Kylie looked into life in the D.C. and Virginia area, the more excited they got. He signed with Washington a week before he could have become an unrestricted free agent.

Outside of telling his own family, the hardest part was telling his teammates. He FaceTimed the guys he was closest with. Peyton Krebs had been with him since Vegas. He'd known Thompson since they were teenagers. That same weekend, he was headed to the wedding of Bowen Byram, another Sabre who'd just been traded away.

"I thought I was going to be a Sabre for life," Tuch told Fairburn. He said he never asked out, never asked for a trade and never wanted to leave. He and Kylie have two sons, and both were born in Buffalo.

A Big Dumb Smile

So far, Washington has been good to him. Through his first nine games as a Capital, Tuch leads the team with five goals, and his seven points trail only Ryan Leonard. He's there for what will be Alex Ovechkin's final NHL season. At practice on Friday, Oct. 23, Carbery put him on a reworked top power-play unit.

That same day, he was asked about facing the Sabres, and he didn't sound like a guy carrying a grudge. "I've just got a big dumb smile on my face," Tuch said, talking about the chance to play against his old teammates.

The Team He Left Behind

The Sabres he'll face are still finding themselves. They're 4-4-2 through 10 games and tied with Montreal for last in the Atlantic Division. Along with Tuch, they lost Byram and Jordan Greenway over the summer. They've trailed by multiple goals in nine of their 10 games and have held a lead in only four.

The comeback habit from last season is still there, though. In Toronto, they came back from two goals down in the third period and beat the Maple Leafs 5-4 on Owen Power's overtime winner. In Montreal, they wiped out another two-goal deficit before Cole Caufield won it 54 seconds into overtime.

Then came Wednesday, Oct. 21, their only home game in a three-week stretch, in front of a sellout crowd at KeyBank Center. Jason Zucker, the team's top power-play goal scorer last season, made his season debut after offseason sports hernia surgery and scored on the power play in the second period. Dahlin returned after missing three games with an upper-body injury and led the team in ice time and shots on goal. It wasn't enough. Rookie Cole Knuble scored twice, Dan Vladar made 26 saves, and Philadelphia won 3-1, snapping Buffalo's four-game point streak. Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen stopped 22 of 25 shots.

Saturday's game in Washington opens a four-game road trip. Brian Koziol has the radio call on WGR, with the pregame show starting at 6 p.m.

Why It Still Means Something Here

Buffalo has watched plenty of players come and go. Most of them get to know this city after they arrive. Tuch already knew it. He was the kid from Baldwinsville in the old red jersey, then the guy on the ice when 14 years of waiting finally ended, then the guy sitting at his locker in full gear because he wasn't ready to let it go.

On Saturday night he'll be in a different sweater, trying to beat the team he grew up loving. And for a few hours at Capital One Arena, Sabres fans will see a familiar No. 89 from the other side.