when did the buffalo sabres join the nhl
Buffalo Sabres The Sabres, along with the Vancouver Canucks, joined the NHL in the 1970–71 season. Their first owners were Seymour H. Knox III and Northrup Knox, scions of a family long prominent in Western New York and grandsons of the co-founders of the Woolworth's variety store chain; along with Robert O. Swados, a Buffalo attorney. On the team's inaugural board of directors were Robert E. Rich, Jr., later the owner of the Buffalo Bisons minor league baseball team; and George W. Strawbridge, Jr., an heir to the Campbell Soup Company fortune. Buffalo had a history of professional hockey; immediately prior to the Sabres' establishment, the Buffalo Bisons were a pillar of the American Hockey League (AHL), having existed since 1940 (and before that, another Bisons hockey team played from 1928 to 1936), winning the Calder Cup in their final season.[3]
List of NHL franchise post-season droughts Among the current 31 NHL teams, 13 have never won the Stanley Cup, including one (the St. Louis Blues) that is among the five oldest expansion teams. Additionally, one of the Original Six franchises – the Toronto Maple Leafs – has a Stanley Cup drought that includes the entire expansion era (48 seasons and counting). With the Nashville Predators winning the Western Conference in 2017, there are only five franchises that have never reached the Stanley Cup Finals. Of those five, the oldest is the Arizona Coyotes (previously the Winnipeg Jets) (35 seasons), while the Maple Leafs and the Blues have even longer droughts (48 and 45 seasons, respectively). The longest Stanley Cup championship drought in history was that of the New York Rangers, broken in 1994 after 53 seasons. The Toronto Maple Leafs have the current longest active Stanley Cup championship drought (and second-longest) at 49 seasons and counting. The Chicago Blackhawks had the third-longest ever Stanley Cup championship drought at 47 seasons, which was broken in 2010. The end of that drought was the first of three consecutive years in which one of the eleven longest such droughts was broken (Chicago Blackhawks in 2010, Boston Bruins in 2011, and Los Angeles Kings in 2012).