With the holiday season virtually upon us, we always take the time to offer up gift ideas for our loved ones. And although fans around the NHL have different wish lists, there’s one thing that Buffalo Sabres fans want for a Christmas present: hope.

No, we’re not talking about faint-hope, or pretend-hope. We’re talking about legitimate hope. Hope that the Sabres are going to have a legitimately-solid season. Hope that this management change – the firing of Kevyn Adams last Monday, we mean – is going to lead to Buffalo being a playoff team for the first time in 15 years.

There’s are other types of hope Sabres fans have: one type is false hope – the type of hope that gives fans unrealistic expectations that this Buffalo team is going to leapfrog other teams in the Atlantic Division and somehow end their 14-year Stanley Cup playoff drought. Because barring some miracle in the final 48 games of the year, the Sabres will be out of the playoff yet again this year.

But by getting on a roll of late – they’ve won five straight games and they’re 7-3-0 in their past 10 games – the Sabres are starting to instill some confidence in their fan base. Now, unless there’s consistently above-averages the rest of the way this season, Buffalo is once again on the fringes of the post-season race. So what could happen is an exercise in yanking the football away from famous cartoon character Charlie Brown. 

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The Sabres’ strong play of late is somewhat encouraging, but if they can’t find a level of performance and stick to it, they’ll fall back into the Eastern Conference basement. And if that’s what happens, Buffalo’s long-suffering fan base is going to have the last dribbles of hope disappear.

Ultimately, professional sports leagues are in the business of selling hope. And that comes in many forms: there’s the hope fans have that their team can not only win a championship, but multiple championships. Then there’s the hope that a team’s young players develop into stars. The latter has happened with Sabres core components Rasmus Dahlin and Tage Thompson, but it hasn’t happened yet with youngsters Owen Power and Devon Levi.

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See where we’re going here? Buffalo has let down its fans so often, Sabres fans are going to be pessimistic about the likelihood of turning their competitive trajectory around for the better. Because after so many years of being hurt, Sabres fans have little-to-no idea about what the best type of hockey hope feels like. 

And until Buffalo does succeed enough to give Sabres fans legitimate hope, it’s going to be another long winter in Western New York.