As the Sabres opened practice Thursday, Buffalo city workers began hanging playoff banners on lamp posts lining Washington Street leading to the team’s arena entrance.
The significance wasn’t lost on Sabres captain Rasmus Dahlin in realizing that for the first time in 15 years, the Stanley Cup playoff route finally includes a stop in Buffalo.
“It’s a crazy feeling,” Dahlin said. “I’ve been grinding here for a long time, and I finally get playoffs. It’s special. It’s something I’ve tried to do here for a long time. And now it’s finally real.”
Ending the NHL’s longest postseason drought, the Sabres’ return to the playoffs — and as first-time Atlantic Division champions — reflects a changing of the guard in the Eastern Conference.
Though familiar fixtures remain in Tampa Bay and Carolina, this year’s eight-team mix doesn’t include two-time defending Cup champion Florida or perennial contender Toronto. All three New York City-area teams were shut out of postseason play for the first time.
In their place are upstarts such as the Philadelphia Flyers, who last qualified in 2020. Montreal and Ottawa are making a second straight appearance following lengthy postseason lapses.
Sidney Crosby and the Pittsburgh Penguins return after a three-year absence. The Boston Bruins are back after a one-year hiatus, making a 24-point jump under first-year coach Marco Sturm.
“I never thought, to be honest with you, about getting 100 points because I know how hard it is to get that amount in this league,” said Sturm whose team opens against Buffalo. “It’s a hard league, and that just says it all.”
— The Tampa Bay Lightning remain the East’s model of consistency, qualifying for a ninth consecutive season out of the rugged Atlantic Division.
“Does it battle test you?" asked Jon Cooper, a two-time Cup winner. "Yes. But also, there’s no easy road. I don’t think anybody’s hiding anything from anybody.”
The Lightning open against Montreal in a meeting of two teams that finished with 106 points, and rematch of Tampa Bay beating the Canadiens in five games in the 2020 Cup final. The challenge for Tampa Bay is advancing past the first round for the first time since losing the final to Colorado in 2022.
— Carolina ran away with the Metropolitan Division title and top spot in the East, going 53-22-7 to clinch its eight consecutive playoff berth.
Competitive as they’ve been, the Hurricanes have yet to reach the Cup final since winning in 2006. They open against Ottawa, which was 10 points out of contention on Jan. 30 before going on a 24-8-6 run to clinch a spot.
“Everyone’s in the playoffs, and everyone’s in a sense the same seed,” Carolina forward Seth Jarvis said. “It’s cool to be No. 1, but I don’t think it’s changed anything within our group. Just have a little more confidence, maybe.”
— The Sabres are confident after making a remarkable turnaround from last in the East in early December to first place by going 39-9-4.
“The only way you get experience is to do what we did in the regular season and get there,” coach Lindy Ruff said, dismissing concern over the Sabres lacking playoff experience. “They handled all the pressure situations. When we needed to win games, the group came up.”
— The Flyers overcame youth and inconsistencies to become the last East team to clinch a berth. They did so courtesy of a 14-4-1 run, becoming the NHL’s first team to make it after being 10 points out of contention with 22 or fewer games remaining.
“We really try to block it out, I’m not going to lie. There’s a lot of negativity, sarcasm. We kind of grew together,” first-year coach Rick Tocchet said. “We believed. It’s hard, because you have to have that thick skin.”
— The Senators aren’t backing down in the face of playing Carolina, seeking to build off losing to Toronto in six games in the first round last year.
— The Bruins have been transformed since their 2019 run to the final. General manager Don Sweeney believes in how the team came together to bounce back from last season's swoon.
“To get to 100 points is a pretty good testament to what this team put together over the course of the year, but it wasn’t easy,” Sweeney said. “It was nerve-racking, but our guys embraced it and they got it done.”
— In his fourth season as Canadiens coach, Martin St. Louis faces a familiar foe in Tampa Bay. St. Louis spent 13 seasons with the Lightning and was a member of the franchise’s 2004 Cup-winning team. He becomes the second player to have his number retired and face his former team in the playoffs as a coach. Chicago coach Brian Sutter was the only other to do so when the Blackhawks faced the St. Louis Blues in 2002.
— Crosby joins Evgeni Malkin in making their 16th playoff appearance together. They've won the Stanley Cup three times, most recently in 2016 and '17. The Penguins haven’t won a series since eliminating the Flyers in six games in the first round of the 2018 playoffs.
“I think after some seasons not being able to do it, I think we appreciate it even more,” the 38-year-old Crosby said.
First round: Carolina beats Ottawa in five games; Pittsburgh beats Philadelphia in six; Montreal beats Tampa Bay in seven; Buffalo beats Boston in seven.
Second round: Carolina beats Pittsburgh in six; Buffalo beats Montreal in six.
Conference final: Carolina beats Buffalo in seven.
AP Sports Writers Aaron Beard, in Raleigh, North Carolina; Dan Gelston, in Philadelphia; Will Graves in Pittsburgh; Rob Maaddi, in Tampa, Florida and Jimmy Golen in Boston contributed.
AP NHL: https://apnews.com/hub/nhl
Philadelphia Flyers' Alex Bump (20) celebrates his goal with Porter Martone (94) and Noah Juulsen (47) during the third period of an NHL hockey game against the Montréal Canadiens, Tuesday, April 14, 2026, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Derik Hamilton)
Carolina Hurricanes' Brandon Bussi (32) celebrates with Mike Reilly (6), Alexander Nikishin (21) Skyler Brind'amour (76) and Ronan Seeley (91) during the third period of an NHL hockey game Tuesday, April 14, 2026, in Elmont, N.Y. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — The Artemis II astronauts who ignited a lunar renaissance gave high marks Thursday to their moonship, especially the heat shield, for its performance during reentry.
In their first news conference since returning to Earth, the three Americans and one Canadian said their lunar flyby puts NASA in a much better position for a moon landing by a crew in two years and an eventual moon base. They spoke from NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, their home base.
Commander Reid Wiseman later told The Associated Press that he’s been so busy since getting back that he hasn’t had time to gaze up at the moon, let alone Carroll Crater, the name suggested by the crew for a bright lunar crater in honor of his late wife. They shared two daughters whose anxieties and fears over their father’s journey ended with his safe splashdown late last week.
“Being 252,000 miles away from home was the most majestic, gorgeous thing that human eyes will ever witness,” he said in an interview with the AP. But hurtling back through the atmosphere at 39 times the speed of sound, “that is scary and that is risky.” That’s why he yearned for home midway through his flight. “You just want to hold your kids and you just want them to know that you’re safe.”
Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canada’s Jeremy Hansen launched to the moon from Florida on April 1, NASA’s first lunar crew in more than a half-century and by far the most diverse.
They became the most distant travelers ever — breaking Apollo 13's record — as they whipped around the lunar far side, illuminated enough to reveal features never viewed before by the human eye. The sight of a total lunar eclipse added to the wonderment.
Their Orion capsule, which they named Integrity, parachuted into the Pacific last Friday to close out the nearly 10-day voyage. Artemis II's Houston homecoming the next day coincided with the 56th anniversary of the launch of Apollo 13.
Wiseman said he and Glover “maybe saw two moments of a touch of char loss” to the heat shield as Integrity plunged through the fastest, hottest part of reentry. Once aboard the recovery ship, they peered at the bottom of the capsule as best they could, leaning over to view any signs of damage. They spotted a little loss of charred material on the shoulder, where the heat shield meets the capsule.
“For four humans just looking at the heat shield, it looked wonderful to us. It looked great, and that ride in was really amazing,” Wiseman said.
He cautioned that detailed analyses still need to be conducted. “We are going to fine-tooth comb every single, not even every molecule, probably every atom on this heat shield," he said.
The heat shield on the first Artemis test flight in 2022 — with no one aboard — came back so pockmarked and gouged that it pushed Artemis II back by months if not years. Instead of redoing it, NASA opted to change the capsule's entry path to minimize heating. Future capsules will sport a new design.
As the parachutes released right before splashdown, Glover said he felt like he was in freefall — like diving backward off a skyscraper. “That’s what it felt like for five seconds,” he said, adding when the ride smoothed out: “It was glorious.”
Since their return, the four astronauts have endured round after round of medical testing to check their balance, vision, muscle strength and coordination, and overall health. They even put on spacewalking suits for exercises under conditions simulating the moon’s one-sixth gravity of Earth to see how much endurance and dexterity future moonwalkers might have upon lunar touchdown.
NASA already is working on Artemis III, the next step in its grand moon base-building plans. The platform from which the rocket launches headed back Thursday to Kennedy Space Center’s Vehicle Assembly Building, where it will be prepped for next year’s Artemis launch.
Still awaiting an assigned crew, Artemis III will remain in orbit around Earth as astronauts practice docking their Orion capsule with one or two lunar landers in development by Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin.
Artemis IV will follow in 2028 under NASA’s latest schedule, with two astronauts landing near the moon’s south pole.
NASA is aiming for a sustainable moon presence this time around. During the Apollo moonshots, astronauts kept their visits short. Twelve astronauts explored the lunar surface, beginning with Apollo 11’s Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin in 1969 and ending with Apollo 17’s Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt in 1972.
Koch said that since returning, she and her crewmates are “feeling even more excited and just ready to take that on as an agency.”
“We made it happen,” she added.
Everyone will need to accept extra risk to achieve all this and trust that any future problems can be figured out in real time, Hansen noted. “We’re not going to be able to pound everything flat before we go. We're going to have to trust each other," he said.
While everything went smoothly for them, “it was also very clear to us that it can get pretty bumpy,” he said. Future crews will have to "understand it can get real bumpy real fast.”
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
This photo provided by NASA shows the Artemis II crew being hoisted into a U.S. Navy MH-60 helicopter after successfully splashing down in the Pacific Ocean on Friday, April 10, 2026, following their 10-day mission around the Moon. (James Blair/NASA via AP)
In this photo provided by NASA, Artemis II crew members Cmdr. Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency mission specialist Jeremy Hansen are loaded into a raft after successfully splashing down in the Pacific Ocean on Friday, April 10, 2026, following their 10-day mission around the Moon. (James Blair/NASA via AP)
NASA's Artemis II crew - NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency (CSA) astronaut Jeremy Hansen speak during a press conference on Thursday, April 16, 2026, in Houston. (AP Photo/Ashley Landis)
