The term “Sabres Twitter” has really become A Thing over the last year or so. Sometimes I have a hard time putting my finger on just what Sabres Twitter is. I tend to think that it’s just anyone who wants to talk about the Sabres on Twitter. I’m not down with the idea that Sabres Twitter or Bills Twitter are some weird, exclusive group that eat at different tables in the lunch room. In other words, I think Sabres Twitter is just an extension of Buffalo Sports Twitter as a whole. If you’re tweeting about the Sabres, you’re contributing to Sabres Twitter.
With that in mind, I thought I’d catalog some of the personalities you tend to run into on Sabres Twitter to the tune of Mitch Albom’s book The Five People You Meet in Heaven. Only tongue in cheek and not quite as eloquent.
The Eternal Optimist
It’s been a rough decade for the Sabres. Yet for some, hope springs eternal. This person is typically the one saying “we need to see more of” a player who has lived long past their shelf life. Every goalie in the system is above a 3.50 GAA and sporting a .875 save percentage? Worry not, someone is due for a hot streak. Even when the team is at rock bottom, the eternal optimist is bullish on their future and will remind you of that routinely.
While the Eternal Optimist Sabres fan might hold some silly views on our favorite team, they’re vitally important. They’re the ones keeping the bus from falling off the edge while the rest of us yell and scream about line combinations, deployment, jersey colors and everything else.
The Reply Guy
Reply Guy is here to make sure you know their opinion on literally anything and everything Sabres related. They’re first into the fray in the replies of media members, they’ll send you a 13 tweet dissertation in response to an innocuous tweet about Carter Hutton’s stick. They live to dive into mentions. Not unlike the Eternal Optimist, they’re a key figure in the Sabres community on the internet. It’s no fun just sending tweets into the void with no one to talk about them with. I can do that at home with my dog. I don’t even need a computer for that. So while Reply Guy can be trying at times, you’ve got to appreciate their effort.
Amerks Fans
Every year NHL teams recall and return players from their farm team. It’s part of the annual ebb and flow of NHL rosters. Sometimes it’s dictated by injury, other times it’s because a hot prospect has earned their right to an NHL paycheck. But every time it happens around these parts, it’s an insult to the the city of Rochester and an active attempt to sabotage the Amerks. And they’re going to let you hear about it.
The rub here is that beyond a farm team’s typical function of developing players for the parent club, most of those team’s top performers are also the guys who are the first to be recalled. So when the Sabres are in need of reinforcements, they’re likely to take Rochester’s minute munching defenseman or leading scorer. It’s the nature of the beast and apparently, it’s just too hard to grasp at times.
I heard you like charts so I put some charts on your charts
So you like hockey? Great, let me bombard you with 800 graphs and charts that tell you why your favorite player is actually bad. That big win against your rival was just lucky and you shouldn’t celebrate it because the reverse coefficient of the rotary girder was bad so therefore your team is doomed.
The growth of analytics in hockey has brought about a brand new way of evaluating the game. Hockey’s analytics community has developed useful tools that can be paired with what you’ve seen, or what you believe, about your favorite team in a manner that can assist in forming more complete and intelligent conclusions. The downside has been, well, I’ll leave it to this tweet from David Cervi to sum it up. I’ve been slow to come around to the pros of hockey’s analytics movement as I feel there’s too much emphasis on trying to predict an unpredictable sport. The tendency of some to lean too heavily on oddly specific metrics has been another turn off for me personally. The growth of analytics has been of benefit to the sport of hockey, but man can it be heavy handed.
Manalytics
The inverse of chart guy are the people who are still refusing to accept what benefits the stat community has to offer. Even the lowest entry point is too much to ask of these guys, who opt to tell everyone how happy they are to not look into analytics. It seems counterproductive to me. Why are you bragging that you don’t like analytics? If you think it’s pointless, just ignore it altogether, it’s not that big of a deal.
Mad Online Guy
You wouldn’t blame Sabres fans for being angry with the state of the franchise. They’ve been allergic to winning for the better part of a decade and it’s hard to see when they’re going to come out on the other side of it all. But there are quite a few fans out there who are just plain old angry. The Sabres could drive to their house, give them a free car filled with $100 bills and mad online guy would wonder why they didn’t spend the money on a second line center. Which, is kind of a fair question at this point.
Anyway, there are a lot of mad online guys out there these days. Some are more upset than others and typically it’s for no good reason. Sure, the team is awful, but why are we upset that a prospect camp invite is wearing Rob Ray’s number? Focus on the task at hand, why they didn’t switch to royal blue.
Prospects Guy
It’s not just Kris Baker, I promise. Prospects guy is always high on the player whose name could just as easily been created in NHL 20’s franchise mode. Sure, this kid is playing in Holland’s third division, but he has great vision. He could still get a look even though he’s 28. I freely admit that I am Prospects Guy. I get geeked up for the draft every year and I enjoy tracking the progress of the Sabres draft picks. After all, the league’s star players all had to start somewhere, why not know what’s coming up for the team? It’s not like the NHL roster is offering you a better distraction.
Blocked by Hamilton or Harrington
Basically 75% of “Sabres Twitter”
Two in the Box 