Jessica Pegula, the daughter of Buffalo Sabres owner Terry Pegula and the No. 5 ranked women's tennis player in the world, is in Spain this week for the Madrid Open but she's still keeping tabs on her hometown hockey team.
Pegula posted a message on Twitter/X early Monday morning after the Sabres scored four goals in the third period Sunday night to stun the Boston Bruins in Game 1 of the Atlantic Division rivals' first-round series in the 2026 NHL Playoffs.
"I can't believe I'm in Europe when this is happened. The FOMO (fear of missing out) is real. There is nothing better than playoff hockey," Pegula wrote. "Let's go Buffalo Sabres."
Buffalo just ended the longest postseason drought in NHL history at 14 seasons, and the atmosphere inside (and outside) the KeyBank Center was nothing short of amazing on Sunday.
Pegula previously told the Tennis Channel she's been tracking the Sabres while traveling around the world with the WTA Tour.
"Yeah, super excited for them," she said in early April. "It's been a long 15 years so I'm so happy that they clinched. Yeah, the city is just going to go absolutely berserk like it's wild, I can't believe it. So, it's so exciting. We're all super excited to watch some playoff hockey for the first time in Buffalo in a long time. So yeah, it's been cool to watch."
Pegula, 32, was born in Buffalo and has gone on to become one of the best women's tennis players of her generation. She's climbed as high as No. 3 in the WTA singles rankings and No. 1 in the doubles rankings. She reached the 2022 French Open doubles final, the 2023 US Open mixed doubles final and the 2024 US Open singles final, but she's still seeking her first career major title.
She'll face either fellow American Taylor Townsend or Katie Boulter of Great Britain in her first match of the Madrid Open this week.
Sabres owner Terry Pegula deserves credit for helping spark Buffalo's remarkable turnaround
Pegula's biggest weakness as a team owner, both with the Sabres and NFL's Bills, is his difficulty letting somebody go once he's built a strong working relationship with them.
That was certainly the case with former Sabres general manager Kevyn Adams, who was unqualified when promoted to the GM role in 2020 and subsequently failed to turn the organization around in a timely manner.
To Pegula's credit, he finally dismissed Adams in mid-December and it's no coincidence Buffalo's almost unbelievable turnaround began around the same time. Jarmo Kekalainen changed the tone of the front office, and the players responded by playing a much more complete brand of hockey.
It would have been easy for the Sabres owner to let Adams, who's received a lot of unwarranted credit in recent months, finish another campaign and consider changes in the offseason. That's been his modus operandi since taking over the organization in 2011.
Instead, he decided to respond the club's early struggles proactively, and it paid off in a massive way.
Would the Blue and Gold still turned their season around with Adams? Maybe, but it's impossible to know for sure. His departure served as a wake-up call for everybody in the franchise. If Pegula was willing to part with his handpicked GM, nobody was safe.
Accountability is one of the important factors when trying to establish a culture within a sports team. There wasn't enough of it during Adams' tenure, and he was often the king of the excuses, and Kekalainen ensured that would no longer be the case.
There are no shortage of reasons the Sabres turned their season around and emerged as a true contender in the Eastern Conference. The GM change is definitely one of them.
So, props to Pegula for making a difficult decision at a key moment, and he was rewarded with finally watching the team end its miserable postseason drought.
Now Buffalo shifts its focus to making a deep playoff run, and Sunday night's triumph over the Bruins was a strong first step in the right direction.
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