BUFFALO, N.Y. — Seth Appert is finishing up his first season as an assistant coach for the Buffalo Sabres. The team, once again, came up short of the playoffs for a record 14th-straight year, but Appert feels change is coming.

"We want to win more and that is the plan going forward, right, to put our team in a position where we can contend and be in the playoffs and contend for Stanley Cups," said Appert.

Appert has been part of turnarounds at other levels of hockey, starting at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 2007, his first head coaching job at the college level.

"It was a little bit of a trial by fire. You're trying to rebuild a program and get it back to the national level that it had been in the past,” he said. "We did make the NCAA Tournament. For most of the middle seven to eight years of our time at RPI we were a top-25, top-30 team in the country. We had multiple Hobey Baker finalists and NHL players, so we did a lot of things there that we are proud of."

After some time with the U.S. Development Program, the AHL came calling, taking Appert to Rochester to take over the Americans in 2020. There, he helped a team that had little playoff success to three deep postseason runs, including an Eastern Conference Final.

"We made the rink a place that was the most fun place for the players to come every day while still being extremely competitive and extremely hard working,” Appert said. “The players dug in and really worked on developing on a daily basis, and so we were able to do what isn't always easy to do at the AHL level, which is win with young players and develop while we are winning.”

And now, some of those young players like Jack Quinn and JJ Peterka are with Appert again at the NHL level with some obvious work to do.

"To get to go through it with young men that you had that experience with in Rochester has been special,” Appert said. “It's not always perfect. Development as not only as players, but as organizations and teams, it's not always linear, it's not always straight lined. There's a lot of troughs along the way of getting to where you want to go.

"I believe you develop real bonds by going through shared adversity together and not giving up on each other while you're going through that shared adversity."

Appert and the Sabres wrap up the season next Thursday in Buffalo.