TORONTO — This won’t come as much solace to long-suffering Buffalo Sabres fans, but it’s a fact worth mentioning in the final week of the regular season as the team appears set to finish dead last in the NHL for the third time in five years.



The Colorado Avalanche were a distant last overall last season — I mean, a worse outfit than these Sabres — and this season they are in a playoff race with less than a week to go.



The point being, there is indeed hope, the young and surprising Avs, led by Hart Trophy candidate Nathan MacKinnon, should be all the motivation in the world for the Sabres.



“It just shows you that you’re never as bad as you think you are, but at the same time, they had to look internally and they had to figure some stuff out,” Sabres veteran Kyle Okposo said Monday when asked about the Colorado example. “You look at Nate’s year and what he’s doing and how he’s really...