Two summers ago, the Marine Midland Arena was the set of the
Jerry Springer Show. This past summer, it was Mister Rogers'
Neighborhood. Matthew Barnaby and Dominik Hasek buttoned up
their warm, fuzzy cardigan sweaters and played nice at a charity
hockey tournament in the Czech Republic. No one threatened to
run the world's best goaltender.
Season ticket holders slipped into comfortable shoes and started
coming back, gradually forgetting about fired President Larry
Quinn, still hated in Buffalo even if most of his decisions -
trading Pat LaFontaine and replacing the back-stabbing duo of
John Muckler and Ted Nolan, among others - have turned out to be
right. No one burned their tickets.
Grandfatherly new owner John Rigas kindly made a generous but
unsuccessful bid for free agent center Ron Francis a few months
after making Dominik Hasek one of the highest-paid alien life
forms in the NHL. No one wondered if the next payroll would be
met.
Then everyone orderly boarded a jumbo jet for a 12-hour,
trapped-in-close-quarters flight to Austria and a late-summer
hockey vacation before school starts. No one was shoved out an
emergency exit over Gander, Newfoundland.
Won't you be my neighbor?
Beast of Burden
The quietest off-season - certainly the shortest - in the history
of the Buffalo Sabres has given way to one of the most optimistic
Octobers in 29 seasons. Ridiculously high expectations are being
heaped on a team that is still one of the youngest, if not the
youngest, in the NHL.
Head Coach Lindy Ruff did the most to ratchet up the pressure on
his team with some very bold preseason predictions.
Top six overall in the NHL. The Stanley Cup Finals.
"If you don't start off with the goal of winning the Cup, why
play?" he asked rhetorically while trying on a set of Marilyn
Manson-style contact lens.
The Sabres in the Finals? Al Morganti of ESPN thinks so, and the
Sabres are the consensus preseason pick to win the Northeast
Division.
Uncharted territory for a team that has relished in the role of
the classic underdog the last two seasons. The Sabres want the
hockey world to underestimate them. Sneak into town with Dominik
Hasek all folded up in an unmarked trunk and sneak away with two
points or even a playoff sweep while players like Martin Rucinsky
wonder how they could have lost to an "average team with a great
goaltender."
But clearly, in 1998-99, the Sabres won't sneak up on anyone.
The whole world will be watching on ESPN, espn2 and all points in
between. They might even be watching until early summer.
Why Not the Sabres?
A quickly maturing team with blazing speed, a maniacal work ethic
and almost perfect chemistry is growing up together after last
spring's stunning run to the Eastern Conference Finals. There are
few egos on the well-coached team, and the team is solidly united
with just enough flaky characters like Hasek and Barnaby to keep
things interesting.
And, oh yeah, they happen to be led by the double-jointed circus
freak whose sheer presence on the ice at once gives the Sabres
the confidence to win and robs the other team of it, and
routinely, their jock straps.
The Dominator.
Don't repeat Rucinsky's error in judgment, though. In front of
The Amazing Rubber Man is more than an average team: a Selke
Trophy winner in Captain Mike Peca, a possible Norris Trophy
contender in Alexei Zhitnik, a two-time 40-goal scorer in Geoff
Sanderson and young players on the come like Matthew Barnaby,
Michal Grosek, Brian Holzinger...
The optimism is well founded.
But before everyone jumps on board the Trolley to the
Neighborhood of Make-Believe thinking this season will be a
martini-sipping ride to a Cup parade in downtown Buffalo, be
warned: There's always a stoned-out-of-his-mind conductor ready
to drive the train off a bridge and into an alligator-infested
bog.
Reality Check, Please
Young players don't always get better the next year. Sometimes
they take two steps back. Dominik Haseks don't always play at
such a mind-boggling level every year. Sometimes emotionally
unstable goaltenders pack up in the middle of the season and move
to a cabin in Montana to write manifestos.
The even scarier thought here is that the Sabres still rely on
the umbilical cord that is Hasek to win games when the offense
that was outscored by 17 teams last season goes
January-on-the-shores-of-Lake-Erie cold. When Hasek is merely
human, like he was in giving up four goals in just 26 shots to
the Dallas Stars on opening night, the Sabres chances of winning
are Rob Razor-thin. The Stars won, 4-1.
The Sabres rarely tested Stars goaltender Ed Belfour, throwing 28
mostly perimeter shots at the Dallas net. When Alexei Zhitnik did
score the apparent tying goal just a day after ending his
holdout, center Wayne Primeau was smack in the middle of the
NHL's downsized crease.
Then, in the early going of the third period with the Stars
leading 3-1, Miroslav Satan gathered in a crazy carom off the
corner boards and found himself all alone five feet to the left
of Belfour.
The Unabrow-mer shot the puck into the goaltender's left pad.
In the city that made famous the sniper on a grassy knoll, the
Sabres kept missing the limousine altogether.
Mostly, they misfired on the power play. The Sabres were 1-for-6
and failed to convert on three straight power plays in the third
period when they were still very much in the game, trailing 3-1.
Like half the teams in the National Football League, the Sabres
power play, ranked 18th last season, is in desperate need of a
quarterback.
The Answer?
Does GM Darcy Regier cash in some of the team's future stocks to
find that badly needed offensive player? Or does he remain
patient and hope the superstar playmaker the Sabres crave is
already on the roster waiting for his supernova?
Can they afford in the pocketbook to make a big move and can they
afford not to with the window of opportunity labeled "Hasek" soon
to slam shut?
Petr Nedved might provide the answer to all of those questions.
Both Ruff and Regier admit the Sabres are interested, and
Nedved's agent confirms he has talked to the Sabres. He would be
costly, not only for owner John Rigas' bank account at about $4
million a season but for the future, coming with the price of
five first-round picks or a combination of picks and players. The
Toronto Sun recently speculated that the cost for Nedved would be
centers Derek Plante and Brian Holzinger.
In return the Sabres would get a 26-year-old center who scored 99
points three seasons ago but is a headcase who held out the
entire 1997-98 season.
By signing the Penguins' holdout, Regier would be experimenting
with the chemistry of a team seemingly ready to bubble over. If
the move fails, and the beaker blows up in his face, fans and
media will openly wonder why the general manager tinkered with a
team on the brink of making a run at the Cup.
Chances are, the Sabres will wait and see if they can generate
more offense from the players on board. Matthew Barnaby and
Michal Grosek, who scored 15 goals in the entire regular season
then 13 in the playoffs alone, can't help but carry that momentum
forward and have better regular seasons. Brian Holzinger,
Miroslav Satan and Mike Peca will all be asked to more frequently
turn on the red light.
But the Sabres may have one wild card up their sleeve: Geoff
Sanderson. Sanderson is coming off an understandably miserable
season that saw him play for three different teams, an
energy-sapping and confidence-rattling time in his career. In his
short time with the Sabres, though, anyone could easily see the
classic speed and uncanny knack for finding the puck that define
Sanderson.
Sanderson scored the Sabres' lone goal in Dallas - albeit just a
deflection - and that's an encouraging sign. If he regains the
goal-scoring form of his Whaler days, the question in Buffalo
might become, "Petr who?"
Without acquiring a player like Francis or Nedved, however, the
Sabres front office is pulling the blanket over its head and
hoping the youngsters have matured much more than just four
months since Joey Juneau tapped the puck past Hasek in overtime
of Game 6 to send the Capitals to the Stanley Cup Finals.
Boys and girls, can you say "leap of faith"?
Players to Watch
Jay McKee. With the loss of Bob Boughner to the expansion
Nashville Predators, the Sabres need a physical defenseman. The
just-turned-21 McKee last season showed flashes of hitting,
toppling opponents into their own benches and flattening forwards
at the Sabres line, but he's been too inconsistent. Now, the
beefed-up boy should get a full season to show his stuff.
Matthew Barnaby. Barnaby showed in the opener he might be
serious about being a full-time Killer. The Smile was back,
throwing snow on Ed Belfour, turtling on Craig Ludwig - drawing a
penalty that led to the Sabres' only goal - and setting up
scoring opportunities. But for Wayne Primeau in the crease,
Barnaby would have assisted on Alexei Zhitnik's overturned goal.
Alexei Zhitnik. Will he continue his seemingly inevitable
development into a Norris Trophy candidate or will he fizzle with
a big contract in hand?
Geoff Sanderson. Will his scoring touch come back?
Dominik Hasek. Worth the price of admission.
In the (Buffalo) Wings
October 16 - Home opener against Florida. Pregame ceremony will
remember the late co-founder of the Sabres, Northrup Knox, who
died on July 23 at the age of 69. The Knox Brothers...the
Aud...the crossed-sabres logo...the voice of the Sabres, Ted
Darling... Much of what Buffalo Sabres hockey meant for so long
to so many people has been lost in recent years. One symbol of
the Sabres does remain, stronger than ever. More on that in the
next issue.
October 23 - The Washington Capitals come to the Marena for a
rematch of the Eastern Conference Finals.
October - The Sabres play six of nine games on the road. Another
stumbling start may be in store. Remember, the team's slow start
a year ago cost them the Northeast Division.
The good news for the Buffalo Sabres and Dallas Stars is that
twice in the last four seasons the losers in the conference
finals one season went on to win the Stanley Cup the next.
(You'll recall that the New Jersey Devils won the Cup in 1995 a
year after being eliminated in the Eastern Conference Finals by
the eventual champion New York Rangers and that the Detroit Red
Wings won the Cup in 1997 after losing first to the
Devils in the finals in '95, then to the Colorado Avalanche in
the Western Conference Finals in '96.)
But the Sabres and Stars, losers in last spring's conference
finals in six games and oft-mentioned to go to the finals in
1999, must hear the bad news, too. Since the league expanded from
six to 12 teams in 1967-68, the sixty losers in the NHL's Final
Four have been more likely to miss the playoffs the next season
(eight teams) than win the Stanley Cup (six teams).
Take last season's Rangers. Please. After being defeated by the
Philadelphia Flyers in five games in the 1997 Eastern Conference
Finals, the Rangers suffered a collective concussion and finished
11th in the Eastern Conference to miss the playoffs altogether.
A little more than half of the sixty teams, unlike the 1998
Rangers, did make the playoffs the next season but lost before
getting back to the semifinals.
Here's how the other 21 teams, the ones that got back to the
semifinals or beyond, fared:
* Six won the Stanley Cup. Teams to do it before the Devils and
the Red Wings were the 1980 New York Islanders, the 1976 Montreal
Canadiens, the 1974 Philadelphia Flyers and the 1970 Boston
Bruins.
* Five lost in the finals. The last such team was the Minnesota
North Stars, who lost in the semifinals to Philadelphia in 1980,
then were defeated in 1981 by a New York Islanders team that was
winning its second of four consecutive Stanley Cups. Minnesota
that year got by the Sabres in the quarterfinal round a year
after Buffalo lost in the conference finals to the Islanders. The
Islanders, by the way, won their first Cup after losing four of
the previous five semifinal rounds from 1975 to 1979.
* Ten lost in the semifinals again. Most recently, the Toronto
Maple Leafs were knocked out by eventual Cup runners-up Los
Angeles and Vancouver in 1993 and 1994.
So if you're one of those prognosticators, like Al Morganti of
ESPN, who picked Buffalo and Dallas to produce the hockey
equivalent of Super Bowls 27 and 28 when the Bills and Cowboys
squared off, take this statistical cold shower: Not once since
the league's original six expansion have the two semifinal losers
played each other for the Stanley Cup the next season.
