Alex Tuch's future in question after Sabres' season ends

Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - After the Buffalo Sabres' 2025-26 season came to an end on Monday in a Game 7 overtime loss to the Montreal Canadiens, attention quickly turned to what the team will look like next year, and what names will or won't be back with the team.

Perhaps the biggest question mark heading into the offseason remains the future of winger Alex Tuch.

The key return piece in the 2021 trade of Jack Eichel with the Vegas Golden Knights, Tuch scored 33 goals and had 66 points for the Sabres this season. He added another four goals and seven points in the playoffs against the Boston Bruins, before being kept completely off the scoresheet in the series against Montreal.

The 30-year-old is scheduled to be an unrestricted free agent on July 1.

"If you go back to last summer, we had talks with [former Sabres general manager] Kevyn Adams and his management staff that didn't progress how we wanted them to," Tuch said Wednesday during his end-of-season press conference. "We decided to hold off and go through the season a little more, and then maybe pick things back up."

Adams ended up being fired mid-season, thus changing the dynamic of contract talks when Jarmo Kekalainen took over as general manager.

"When Jarmo stepped in, we had some good talks, then they stalled out a little bit," Tuch acknowledged. "At a point where we were starting to make the playoff push, I decided that it was in my best interest and the best interest for the team in general to put anything like that on hold until after the season was over.

Now with the season over, there's a little over a month for the team to come to a deal or make another decision with the winger. Tuch did say Kekalainen told him that he wants to have him back during his exit interview.

"I’m going to do whatever is best for myself and my family," Tuch said. "Obviously in the next month or so, I’m going to have to make some decisions."It sounds like Kekalainen is being very careful when talking about an extension for Tuch.

And while Kekalainen acknowledged Tuch's importance to the success of the Sabres this season, he seemed hesitant to get too extensive when talking about a potential extension for the winger.

"He’s always getting some of the most ice-time of any of the forwards, killing penalties, playing power play, he’s a consistent goal scorer. He’s a valuable part of our team," Kekalainen said during his end-of-season press conference. "But just like I’ve told him and I tell everybody in the same situation, we make our decisions based on how can we make our team better. We have to come to an agreement that this is the type of contract where we can still make our team better, and hopefully we can do that.”