The Buffalo Sabres were one of the NHL’s best teams last season, finishing first in the Atlantic Division before beating the Boston Bruins in their first-round Stanley Cup playoff series. Buffalo lost to the Montreal Canadiens in Round 2, but long-suffering Sabres fans wanted to see them end their decade-and-a-half playoff drought, and they did that..

And here at TheHockeyNews.com, we've been breaking down the Sabres’ Eastern Conference opponents in an online series we call “Know Your Enemy”. In each of these files, we’re focusing on how Buffalo played against each East team, in addition to how they’re likely to fare against the team this season. And in this file, we’re analyzing the New York Islanders. 

The Islanders didn’t have an impressive off-season, but they still have some excellent pieces – most notably, young stud defenseman Matthew Schaefer. How will the Sabres fare against the Isles? Here’s this writer’s best guess:

BUFFALO SABRES VS. NEW YORK ISLANDERS

NEW ISLANDERS PLAYERS: Matias Maccelli (LW), Mitchell Chaffee (RW), Vitek Vanecek (G)

2025-26 SERIES: Sabres 3-0-0, Islanders 0-2-1

2026-27 GAMES AGAINST EACH OTHER: January 20 at Islanders; February 3 at Buffalo; March 21 at Islanders

CAN THE SABRES BEAT THIS TEAM? The short answer to this question is a firm ‘yes, absolutely the Sabres should beat the Islanders – and they should sweep them as they did last season’. 

Why? Because, for starters, Buffalo’s lineup is far deeper and more talented than the Isles’ is, as the Islanders are still trying to transition into a new era for the team. Isles GM Mathieu Darche has made some inroads in building a new team for a new generation, but there’s still plenty of work that needs doing on Long Island, and we don’t see the Islanders making the playoffs in 2026-27.

The Sabres have all of their games against the Isles in an eight-week period, and two of those games will come on the road for Buffalo. At that point in the year, the Sabres will have no excuse for not taking it to the Islanders. They need to snuff out any possible signs of life from the Isles, and they need to do it with authority.

Otherwise, we’re going to get to the end of the regular season, and Buffalo will be looking up at the standings, wondering why they didn’t finish with home-ice advantage – or why they may miss the playoffs altogether this year. The difference between standings position can come down to only two or three teams, and if the Sabres are squandering points against teams they ought to beat every time out, they could come to rue the day they took their foot off the gas and squandered their season.

The Islanders aren’t a pushover by any means, but their lack of depth and their aged players aren’t going to carry them to the top of the league. Thus, the Sabres should be beating the Isles each and every game, and that includes beating them in their three clashes this season.

J.T. Miller was measured. Thursday, after all, was just the first day of training camp for the Rangers, and it’ll take weeks’ and months’ worth of games to change the franchise’s trajectory. There were no playoff declarations. No bold proclamations that the Blueshirts are better than last year after an offseason of change. No dissection of roster moves by the front office to overhaul parts of the roster, even. 

“We’re not gonna get ahead of ourselves,” Miller, now back in his old No. 10 jersey, said. 

But, Miller admitted, this all “seems like a nice reset for us.” A time for the Rangers to “turn the past from last year.” His injury-filled campaign of 2025-26 started in the preseason and continued with three stints of missed time — and two trips to injured reserve — during the regular season. His 17 goals and 53 points marked his fewest in both categories since 2018-19 with the Lightning. And it all unfolded during his first year as captain, stepping into the elevated role and trying to not force himself to do more than he normally would. 

This year, the Rangers will get a chance to move past their dismal 77-point campaign of last year. It’ll be different from the start, with no Vincent Trocheck (traded in the offseason) and no Artemi Panarin (traded before the Olympic roster freeze) here at this training camp. But at the crux of it all, of course, will be Miller, who gets a chance to move past his own woes of 2025-26 while occupying a critical role as the second-line center — skating alongside dynamic acquisition Pavel Dorofeyev for now — with Trocheck now in Utah. 

“It was a lot last year,” Miller said. “Just a little bit of distraction everywhere, it seemed like, around our team. Obviously with The Letter coming out, I was hurt a lot of the year, I was at the Olympics — just a busy season, and I feel like it’s kinda hard to evaluate. 

“But certainly not satisfied and saying that that’s the standard for myself. I mean, we didn’t get to where we want to be, and I took a lot of ownership of that. I just feel fresh right now. I feel good. And I’m excited that we get another crack at it this year with a fresh slate.” 

The stakes will always be high for Miller. That’s the pressure that comes with the “C” sewn on his chest, just as it did for Jacob Trouba and Ryan McDonagh and Ryan Callahan and Mark Messier and all the other past Blueshirts captains. Miller said he expects more from himself as a leader this year. He said he learned from mistakes last season, which quickly spiraled into selling at the trade deadline and a reality where president and general manager Chris Drury dropped The Letter 2.0. 

Miller spent time at both center and wing last year in the 68 games he did appear in, and when the Rangers’ first group — with mostly NHL players — skated Thursday, Miller, 33, was positioned between Dorofeyev and Oliver Bjorkstrand. Dorofeyev collected more than 30 goals the past two seasons with the Golden Knights. He was the draft-day splash by the Blueshirts, the hyped acquisition during a public retool who could be the missing piece that tips the Rangers toward being a playoff team in April.

Head coach Mike Sullivan said that Miller’s play-making ability with the puck is “probably undervalued by some,” and Sullivan expressed a belief in Miller being able to serve as the Rangers’ second-line center, indirectly doubling as a belief that his skill set can complement Dorofeyev if they break camp still paired together. 

“He has the ability to distribute the puck,” Sullivan said of Miller. “I think J.T. brings a physical element and a down-low game, a grind game that I think he can drag his linemates into a little bit so they can create some offense different ways. I think [Dorofeyev is] a guy that obviously can score goals, and so we wanted to see what that looks like.” 

That role will only add to the pressure facing Miller this season. To the expectations that he can avoid the struggles from last year reappearing again and becoming a norm for his second Blueshirts stint. For one day, those stakes faded with the arrival of a new training camp, where “vibe” and “excitement” and anything else that described palpable energy were the buzzwords of his press conference that captured the emotion of the Rangers’ entire session. 

“I feel very hungry,” Miller said. “I mean, after a year like last year, I just think in general I think I’m naturally competitive — I’d like to be better, I want the team to play better, I want better results.”

After Semyon Varlamov underwent two partial knee replacements, Ilya Sorokin had the same question for him as everybody else. 

“I asked him, ‘What do you think? It’s done?’ ” Sorokin recalled Thursday. The “it” was Varlamov’s career. “He said, ‘No, I will come back.’ First thing he said.” 

Somehow, some way, Varlamov looks on track to resume playing hockey games this season. He took the ice Thursday as the Islanders opened training camp, and if you didn’t know any better, you would have been unable to tell what he’d been through over the 22 months that have elapsed since he last took part in an NHL practice or game. 

Varlamov never had a timeline for his return. As far as he knows, there’s no precedent for what he’s doing. 

Research by The Post turned up one professional athlete to undergo a partial knee replacement and return to competing at an elite level: Olympic skier Lindsey Vonn. As for NHLers or professional athletes in team sports, we could find no comparable examples. 

“The type of surgeries I’ve done, people [are] doing it, but not professional hockey players able to do it and try to come back,” Varlamov said. “That was kinda like a crazy idea. Very risky idea. I took a risk.” 

A risk that might give him his career back. 

“I wasn’t ready to retire,” Varlamov said. “Mentally, I wasn’t there. Definitely, some days it was in my mind when things were not going well. Rehab, we had a lot of setbacks, pushbacks. I was thinking, maybe this is it, I won’t be able to come back. But you wake up the next morning and just tell yourself that you’re not ready to retire. I’m not there yet, I guess. 

“I still have a lot of respect and love for the game. I want to be around this team. This team is looking great with the younger guys now coming in, older guys. So this is very exciting, the whole thing. I pushed myself. I had a lot of motivation also, because the team is looking good. I want to be part of it longer.” 

On a practical, hockey level, the implications for the Islanders are hard to fully unpack. General manager Mathieu Darche acknowledged that keeping three goaltenders on the active roster is a possibility, with Vitek Vanecek under contract, as well as Sorokin and Varlamov. Coach Pete DeBoer said that with an 84-game schedule, the Islanders will want close to 30 games from their backup goaltender, and given the club’s history of overusing Sorokin, they ought to be wary about doing so again. 

The nature of what Varlamov is trying to do makes it impossible to predict how this will go. One thing is obvious from Thursday, though: The Islanders, as an organization, are in a little bit of awe over the fact that he has gotten this far. 

“It’s almost inspiring to our guys,” Darche said. 

“When I got here and I heard about the surgery he had undergone, I was not counting on seeing him at all,” DeBoer said. 

“I wanna say he’s probably the first in history to do it,” JG Pageau told The Post. “That’s pretty cool, and it’s all in his honor to be able to do that.” 

There are still so many steps to go. Varlamov needs to get through camp and the preseason with no setbacks. If he does make it as far as a regular-season game, every period will be a test. 

But he has come so far already. It took until the beginning of March for him to truly feel he would have a chance to play. He upped his skating from three times a week to four or five, successfully pushing to get into a couple of AHL games at the end of Bridgeport’s season — a massive, confidence-boosting step. 

“I feel like if I didn’t play those two games, there’s no chance the team would give me a chance to be part of this training camp,” Varlamov said. 

He did, and now he’s here. If you could ever award the Masterton Trophy on the first day of the NHL’s calendar, this would be the time. 

“I don’t want to jump ahead of things,” Varlamov said. “I’m just taking one day at a time and what’s the best thing I can do to be a better teammate? Just [be] the best version of yourself today. I can only control what’s happening today. I can’t think what’s gonna happen in 2-3 weeks. It’s not in my control. 

“What I’m gonna play, how many games I’m gonna play, maybe I’m not gonna play. Who knows, right? We have a lot of good goalies here. I’m just focusing on today.”