Go Sabres!

It hasn't been a good couple of weeks for my sports teams. As I mentioned in an earlier blog, A-Rod got caught using steroids, after of course having denied it his whole career. But the Bills are also in the news, after star running back, and possibly the franchise's best hope, Marshawn Lynch got arrested on a felony gun charge. I don't know the details, but apparently he was in a car that got pulled over and, in the course of the investigation, they found an illegally concealed weapon.

Unfortunately, this is not the first time that "Beast Mode" has gotten himself in trouble with the law. Last season, he participated in a hit and run, where apparently he hit a woman and then fled the scene. Luckily, she was ok, and that was the end of that. But as the old saying goes (despite our former president's attempt to butcher it): fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. I gave Marshawn the benefit of the doubt last time. This time, I don't know what to think.

So, to overgeneralize, the Yankees and Bills are a bunch of cheaters and felons, respectively. That leaves the Buffalo Sabres. Now, I never was a hockey fan growing up. That said, if I rooted for anyone, it would be the Sabres. I can still remember the infamous "No goal," where Brett Hull was allowed to break the rules by having his skate in the crease before scoring the winning goal, beating us in the Stanley Cup Finals. Let me tell you, the sports talk world in Western New York was buzzing after that. The now defunct "Empire Sports" network talked about nothing else for the next two days, as Buffalo had gotten screwed yet again. In fact, at a later Barenaked Ladies concert in Buffalo, the drummer Tyler Stuart worked into Auld Lang Syne the line "And may Brett Hull never forget, that his skate was in the crease!" to the boisterous cheers of the audience.

However, that didn't really affect me much, and I didn't keep track of the Sabres after that, until New Years day 2008. That was the day of the first "NHL Winter Classic," an game between the Sabres and the Penguins played outdoors, in the snow, in Ralph Wilson stadium, in front of more than 70,000 crazy Buffalo fans. Sadly, we lost, but that game opened my eyes to the Sabres. Last season, I started listening to some games on the interweb, and this year, I went to my first Sabres game, against the Anaheim Ducks. Well, we lost that one too (losing is not that rare in Buffalo) but it was a great atmosphere, with many other Buffalo fans in attendance. I had borrowed my friends hockey "sweater" (you better not call it a jersey) and liked it so much, I bought one of my own.

And now I am hooked on the Sabres. We are currently just on the cusp of the playoffs; if the season ended today, we would be in, but not by much. So, Go Sabres! You can be my one respectable team, and do something the Bills haven't done in so long I have forgotten what it is like: actually play games after the regular season ends.