Buffalo Sabres

Building on the Sabres’ Canadian exploration

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The Sabres have officially begun their Canadian Bacon mission of an invasion of Ontario. The goal isn’t to litter, but to establish a greater footprint for the organization in the golden horseshoe.

Ted Black, Danny Gare, Jay McKee and Ville Leino all took a trip through Ft. Erie and St. Catharines  that included visits to schools, hockey clinics and, naturally, Tim Hortons. Good on the Sabres for seeing the comedy in having Leino serve up donuts much like he did last season (see what I did there). Social Media Sam deserves some credit for her Ricky Bobby “I’d love to sign your baby” Instagram caption as well.

All kidding aside, the Sabres have taken a wise approach here. Obviously there are a ton of fans in Ontario that are ticket holders. While most of them either sell their tickets to fans of other teams or simply root for the Leafs, the Sabres have a significant portion of their patrons in Ontario. The same goes for the Bills, the Galleria and Buffalo Niagara Airport and most of Western New York.

Pulling from Ontario would occur even if the Sabres (and Bills) didn’t bother marketing themselves. It is just how sports fans will operate. For fans in Fort Erie and St. Catharines who don’t have a pro team in their city, having the Bills and Sabres a hop and a skip down the Q is beyond convenient. While Toronto is the obvious first choice for many of these fans, Buffalo provides a natural fit for sports fans looking to affiliate with an NHL or NFL franchise.

From a business standpoint, cultivating this fanbase and maybe even building upon it is an easy approach for the Sabres. What has changed is the proactive approach the team has begun to show. This type of physical outreach shows that the Sabres don’t just respect the contingent of fans they have from Ontario, they want to grow that fanbase.

This relationship could potentially have a positive effect on the rest of the Western New York sports scene as well. Continue reading →

Amerks seeing red for 2012-13

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While Jhonas Enroth’s mask tweet was rather unexpected, the Amerks third jersey unveiling was scheduled ahead of time. In addition to their white home and royal road jerseys, the Amerks will wear a screaming red alternate uniform this season.

Amerks.com

 

They did it right, however. The uniform remained unchanged aside from the base color. The triple stripes on the sleeves and waist stay blue and white and the Amerks crest also sticks around. Aside from incorporating an alternate color, the Amerks kept their jersey largely unchanged.

Perhaps it is that red, white and blue are a pleasing scheme that can be used in any combination. The Sabres use of gold doesn’t necessarily allow for too many subdued uses. While a red uniform isn’t conservative (hello, butter knives), it complements the color scheme the Amerks use quite well. Gold, on the other hand, contrasts the Sabres (or Preds) use of navy in a much louder fashion. Yet, I’m left wondering if the Sabres third jerseys (due for 2013-14) will use gold as a primary color. Continue reading →

Jhonas Enroth’s stunning new mask

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Jhonas Enroth, king of Instagram, has a new mask for the upcoming (hopefully) season. It happens to be totally awesome.

Enroth uses the world’s best helmet artist, Dave Gunnarsson (daveart), and has yet to disappoint with any of the artwork he has worn during his time in North America. His newest lid is a thing of beauty, perhaps the best helmet he will wear at this point in his career.

The brick wall art remains down the middle of the design with the Sabres primary logo prominent on the left side. On the right side is a combination of the jersey stripe form the white uniform, silhouettes of bison, Buffalo scripted on the chin and a badass longhorn skull.

Aside from providing the most vivid, sharp artwork on a mask, Gunnarsson’s specialty is working stripe patterns into his masks. This instance makes the blue, silver and gold stripes a focal point of the right side despite being the most basic portion of the artwork.

The buffalo from the primary logo adorns the gold stripe while silhouetted bison run above the upper blue stripe. Gunnarsson also worked a diamond plate pattern near the chin. However, the longhorn skull does it for me. Despite being relatively obscured towards the top of the helmet, it reminds me of a mask once worn by Grant Fuhr during his time here. That mask that Fuhr wore was my favorite Sabres mask of all time.

Combining this mask with the white bison helmet that Ryan Miller will wear ought to give the Sabres the best one-two punch of helmet artwork in the league.

 

Conjecture department: Could a lockout benefit the Sabres?

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Might this lockout be a good thing? Not for the game or fans, mind you; but for the season.

When I look at the Sabres past few seasons, there has been a significant lull in performance at some point. Whether that came at the beginning of the year (2010-11) or in the middle of the year (2011-12), the team has suffered from a drop off that ultimately cost the team wins and position in the standings.

Obviously last year’s mid-winter slump was centered around injuries and horrible play, but fatigue and the grind of the season likely had something to do with it. Since it seems as if a lockout is inevitable at this point, could it be somewhat beneficial for the Sabres to play a shortened schedule?

Perhaps a shortened season would allow for Buffalo’s offensive players to stay fresh over the entire course of the season. The same would go for the goaltending and defense. In fact, shortening the schedule could be massively beneficial for Ryan Miller, whose workload would potentially go from 60+ games to 40+ games. That is, of course, if Lindy Ruff utilizes Jhonas Enroth properly.

There are a few permutations here that serve as counterpoints to this train of thought. First, a shorter schedule would also cause the league to condense games into a smaller package in hopes of keeping the 2012-13 season to an adequate length. This will cause more back-to-back matchups and could potentially create more wear and tear on the players.

Secondly, every team will be playing a shorter schedule. Because of that, every team will reap the same benefits from trimming the schedule down from 82 games. It’s not as if the Sabres are tailor-made to sprint as opposed to finishing a marathon or gaining any sort of added advantage compared to the rest of the league. Continue reading →

Pegula Ice Arena progressing towards completion

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This is a special guest submission from Kyle Rossi who runs the blog Thank You Terry. His blog is all about Penn State hockey – both club and NCAA – and is full of phenomenal information. I highly recommend reading it on a regular basis. Kyle was kind enough to offer some insight to the progress being made on the Pegula Ice Arena down in State College. Given the Sabres recent victory regarding the Webster Block, I thought there would be no one better to provide some insight on the scope of a Pegula funded project such as the PIA or the HARBORcenter. Enjoy.

Hey Sabres fans! My name is Kyle Rossi, and I write Thank You Terry, a blog covering the soon-to-be four hockey teams representing Penn State (men’s and women’s NCAA, men’s and women’s ACHA). As I’m sure you know, you and I both share a debt of gratitude to one rather wealthy man: Terry Pegula.

The rendering of what the finished Pegula Ice Arena will look like.

Our stories are actually somewhat parallel. While Buffalo was wandering through a purgatory characterized by an always-competitive team that never saw a free agent it couldn’t lose (or a scouting department it couldn’t slash) and therefore couldn’t take the final couple of steps, Penn State was dealing with its own sort of limbo. Our non-varsity teams, known as the Icers and Lady Icers, had been considered candidates to make the jump to the big time, NCAA Division I, for decades – if only the school could find some money for a DI-caliber hockey arena. Despite PSU’s glut of success in the ACHA (including seven national championships), the program’s rabid supporters were always just one “hey, when are you guys going DI?” from an outsider away from a feeling of hopelessness.

Suddenly, in swoops this billionaire nobody had ever heard of to write large checks and save the day. In the Sabres’ case, I suppose he wasn’t a complete unknown, but there still had to be a “wait…this guy’s a Sabres fan…and he wants to buy the team?!?” moment for you guys.

Anyway, Chris invited me to write this post to update you on the progress of something possibly of interest of you, the arena bearing Pegula’s name on Penn State’s campus.

You might be familiar with some of the widely-reported basics. There will be two NHL-sized sheets, one in what’s being called the Community Rink, which will have 300 seats, the other in the main arena, which will seat 6,000. Five thousand of those seats will be arranged in a single-level horseshoe, with a ring of suites above the open concourse that will be at the top of the “regular person” seating. The final thousand seats will be the student section, to be located behind the net Penn State will attack twice. It will be as steep as code allows, helping to meet the one major directive Pegula has given on the project, that the building “sound like a hockey game inside of a garbage can” on game days.

“It should sound like a hockey game inside a garbage can.” Terry Pegula

The price tag – $89 million – is absolutely staggering for a college hockey facility of its size. For context on that, one only needs to consider some of the venues toured by a Penn State contingent (including Pegula) in 2010 to generate design ideas. Notre Dame’s Compton Family Ice Arena, which opened last season, cost about $50 million. Miami’s Goggin Ice Center cost $35 million (in 2006). Minnesota-Duluth’s AMSOIL Arena opened in late 2010 at a cost of $38 million, while RIT’s proposed Gene Polisseni Center, the most likely candidate to replace the Pegula Ice Arena as the newest in college hockey, is estimated to cost around $35 million. Basically, if Penn State gets anything approaching dollar-for-dollar value on this project, it will instantly become the crown jewel of college hockey. Continue reading →

What makes you elite?

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The word elite gets tossed around a lot by hockey fans and members of the media. It seems to be one of those terms that is easy to use to qualify a player’s talent level when discussing career potential or, more often, their trade value.

But is there a way to draw the line on elite players? Is there a specific number that represents the cut off between elite and very good players? Or perhaps the term is so arbitrary that it is nothing more than an adjective that provides a simple way to quantify certain players.

Is Rick Nash elite? Prove it.

What is interesting about determining “elite” players is that the qualifications seem to change every season. Not to mention the fact that those who fall into the “elite” category change on a regular basis.

There is a group of players at every position in the NHL who deserve to be called elite, or superstars. However, with this term being used so loosely, I wonder if the opinion of elite status is a bit skewed.

There is no doubt that players like Shea Weber, Sidney Crosby and Henrik Lundqvist are elite. Whether you’re talking centers, defensemen, wings or goaltenders, there is a magic number of true elite players and those who fall into other categories. It is my opinion that this is not only a sliding scale on a yearly basis but based on position as well.

Perhaps the league’s elite goaltenders fall somewhere in the 7-10 range, whereas an elite defensemen could potentially be found anywhere from the 15-20 range depending on how the players were ordered and, of course, depending on who is doing the ranking.

The issue is that there is no way to truly draw a line between “elite” and “not elite”. The gray area leaves room for debate (which is fun) but also makes the term rather arbitrary. Continue reading →

Ryan Miller is a what now?

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When NHL 13 rolls out next month, Ryan Miller will sport a 92 rating. That is a rating that comes in above such tenders as Henrik Lundqvist, Pekka Rinne, Jonathon Quick and every other goalie in the league.

Yes, Miller is the highest rated goalie in NHL 13 based on what is probably a crazy algorithm developed by EA Sports based on performance, stats and perhaps a spousal hotness x-factor. This rating was determined by a bunch of coding experts who developed that algorithm and poured over results from the past few years to determine the number.

The best part of all this is how infuriated all of Miller’s detractors will be. Continue reading →

Unessentials: The Buffalo Sabres

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Puck Daddy is pretty much the gold standard for hockey blogging. Just about every guy or girl who starts up a hockey-centric blog is hoping to turn into Wyshynski one day.

This summer, Puck Daddy rolled out a new series call Essentials. This is a post that revolves around the Essential player, goal, season, game etc. about each team in the league. While the Sabres version has yet to come out, I wanted to have a little fun with this idea.

So, rather than step on the toes of Puck Daddy, Wysh and whichever Sabres blog is awarded the Sabres Essentials, I chose to go a different direction. This will be the Unessentials for the sabres franchise. For the most part this will just be the opposite of what the Puck Daddy series has highlighted. For example, the unsung hero may be an overrated player, the best game will be the exact opposite of that. Hopefully you get the point.

So, I give you, the Sabres Unessentials:

Player: Slava Kozlov

Kozlov was what the Sabres got in return for Dominik Hasek. The Sabres also ended up with a draft pick that was eventually ended up with Atlanta for the 2002 Draft. Kozlov’s tenure in Buffalo was short and uneventful. He played 38 games and scored nine goals before a laceration put him on the shelf for most of the year. Kozlov hasn’t been shy about complaining about the city and his time here. He is also probably a big reason why many Sabres fans think that all Russians are lazy jackasses.

Season: 2002-03

Six months prior to the start of the 02-03 season, John Rigas and his sons were shipped off to jail, the Sabres lost their owners and started on a spiral to the bottom of the league. At that point, “Hockey Heaven”was only drawing about 10,000 fans per game, the team couldn’t win and there were whispers that the Sabres could potentially leave town.

The 02-03 season led to the draft pick that became Thomas Vanek, the Golisano ownership, Daniel Briere’s arrival and the moves that would build the foundation for the 2005-06 team. However, the time after Hasek left in the early 2000s were dark days for the Sabres franchise. Continue reading →

The Instigator Podcast 1.17 – Waiting on Webster

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Eric and I are back with another episode of The Instigator Podcast. We chat a little bit about the Webster Block, what could be next for the arena district and play plus/minus.

Flyers gain flexibility with Predators decision

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The Predators took a necessary and expected step today by matching the massive 14-year offer sheet that Shea Weber signed with the Flyers.

This guarantees that Weber will be in Nashville for the foreseeable future. Nashville cannot trade Weber for this year, but it is plausible to think that they could work out a deal with Philly next season if they absolutely need to be out from under that contract. But with most chatter centering around a NTC/NMC for Weber, that seems quite unlikely. Matching the offer sheet also guarantees that the Flyers do not end up with Weber. From the perspective of those who hate the Flyers, this could be both a blessing and a curse.

While Philly will no longer have the services of Weber for the next decade-and-a-half but now have well over $7.8M in cap space to play with. That means they can go whole hog after Shane Doan and Bobby Ryan. Now that the Weber situation has been resolved, Rick Nash has found a new home and with the Parise and Suter sweepstakes long resolved, everyone’s attention will be turned to Doan and Ryan.

Since the Flyers have the financial freedom to explore every option available, they’ll surely big a major player for each of the right wingers. Ask yourself this. Would it be worse to see Shea Weber in Philly for 14 years or see them acquire Doan or Ryan as a result of missing out on Weber?

For me, the answer is Weber. All day, every day. Facing Weber on a regular basis would be far more nightmare inducing than the thought of Doan for three or four years or even Ryan. Weber is plain old nasty to play against – just ask Henrik Zetterberg – and seeing him on a regular basis in the East would be nightmarish. Obviously Doan and Ryan make the Flyers that much better, but not on the level that Weber would have. Plus, the Flyers are simply a potential destination at this point. There isn’t the near certainty that the Weber offer sheet entailed. Continue reading →