'We’re a hockey town': On the cusp of the playoffs, Sabres electrify a region
“We’ve been waiting for this since we’ve been open,” said Matt Kahn, who opened Big Ditch Brewing Company a mile from the arena in 2015.
KeyBank Center dropped the lights. In the dark arena, phone flashlights blinked to a chaotic rhythm.
You could no longer see individual people seated in faraway stands, though there were enough fans to form their own small city.
Sabres fans had plenty to celebrate during Thursday's 5-0 victory over the Blue Jackets at KeyBank Center.
The playoffs are expected to be a big boost for downtown bars and restaurants. Joed Viera, Buffalo News
It was like looking out the window of a big-city hotel at night and seeing a blur of headlights rushing down the street, iPhones bopping along the sidewalks and apartments lit up in distant skyscrapers. Thousands of people became pinpricks of light.
The light show happened moments before Thursday's Sabres game against the Columbus Blue Jackets. It captured the mood: exciting and electric.
It was always going to be electric. That’s a favorite word of Sabres fans, at least when the team is winning. The Sabres are going to the Stanley Cup Playoffs for the first time in 15 years, ending the longest playoff drought in NHL history.
Maybe electricity is the inevitable effect of 19,000 people filling one room with hope.
Fifteen years is almost a fifth of the average American lifespan. In 2011, the last time the Sabres made the playoffs, most fans probably led different lives. On Thursday, as two 40-something women waiting in line to scan their tickets put it, they had “no kids!”
The young Sabres fans carting Sabretooth plushies through the stands have never seen a triumphant Sabres team until now.
Kenmore East senior Brody Semrau was 3 years old when the Sabres were last in the playoffs. His first game was in 2012 – the year the drought started.
“It’s nice to have a team other than the Bills be good at a sport,” Brody said. He added, “I’ve always loved hockey the most.”
Buffalo Sabres fans cheer in the second period of Thursday's game against Columbus.
Joed Viera/Buffalo News
The area around KeyBank Center, then named HSBC Arena, is unrecognizable from the last time the Sabres made the playoffs. There was no Harborcenter. Most of Canalside’s attractions were only ideas. Terry Pegula had just bought the Sabres and vowed to make the team's primary reason for existence to win a Stanley Cup.
Over the last 15 years, some fans hibernated. They lay dormant, skipping KeyBank Center games, glossing over hockey talk. They stopped buying tickets and team merch.
But they never left.
“You never get out of the Sabres, right? You’re always with them, whether you watch all the games or not; you’re always there. You don’t go anywhere else,” said Jody Thur, a longtime fan from East Aurora. “It’s kind of bad if you do.”
What will the playoffs be like now?
The fans who stayed with the team during the dark times – and could afford season tickets – are the ones who got early access to playoff tickets.The Sabres have already sold many of the tickets for their first two home playoff games. At 10 a.m. Monday, an "extremely limited" number of tickets will go on sale to the public. (Secondhand tickets are already on sale for anywhere from several hundred to several thousand dollars.)
The Sabres gave season ticket holders – first the current season ticket holders, then the ones who bought seasons for next year – presale access to playoff tickets.
Buffalo Sabres defenseman Logan Stanley (64), right wing Jack Quinn (22), and center Ryan McLeod (71) celebrate Quinn’s goal in the third period.
Joed Viera/Buffalo News
"These are the folks that have stuck with us throughout these last several years, and I think they deserve and need that level of respect. And it's something that's truly important to us, to make sure that our season ticket holders come first," Jake Vernon, chief commercial officer for the Buffalo Sabres, said earlier this week.
The playoffs start April 18, but the game dates and locations won’t be finalized until the regular season ends.
Meanwhile, fans can begin making tentative plans. Those who can't secure playoff tickets but still want to feel the electricity radiating from the arena can go to Canalside for free watch parties.
During the home playoff games, Canalside will stream the games on a large screen. There will be food and beer trucks and on-stage entertainment.
The Sabres are also reprising their popular pregame Party in the Plaza series for home playoff games.
Joseph Saj, a 60-year-old fan from Tonawanda, remembered those parties as he sat in the KeyBank lobby waiting for Thursday’s game to begin.
“It was electrifying,” Saj said.
Indeed, “the atmosphere was electric,” wrote a News reporter in 2006 about the first Party in the Plaza. Fans passed around “makeshift, tin-foiled chalices” resembling Stanley Cups.
Hockey fans gather for the Party in the Plaza prior to the Buffalo Sabres and Montreal Canadiens at KeyBank Center on Oct. 14, 2021.
Harry Scull Jr., News file photo
For this season's playoff away games, the Sabres are partnering with Seneca Resorts & Casino for watch parties. Details haven't been released yet. (The Seneca Buffalo Creek Casino is also a new addition since the last playoffs.)
Since the playoff schedule hasn’t been released yet, most bars and restaurants haven’t shared details on watch parties. Many of them weren't even open the last time the Sabres were in the playoffs.
“We’re not really sure what to expect,” said Chris Ring, owner of Chippewa’s Rec Room, which will host watch parties with food and drink specials for every playoff game. The games will be broadcast – sound on – on two video walls and 12 TVs.
“Buffalo’s been a football town for so long, for at least the last five or six years,” Ring said. “It’s exciting to see now that we’re a hockey town back through and through.”
Big Ditch Brewing Co. will also host sound-on watch parties with specials at both locations – downtown Buffalo and Lockport – for each playoff game.
“We’ve been waiting for this since we’ve been open,” said Matt Kahn, who opened Big Ditch a mile from the arena in 2015.
Sabres shine brightens
There are hints of Sabres mania throughout the city. Sabres merchandise in shop windows. Sabres beer featured in prominent grocery store displays. Jerseys and ballcaps on more and more pedestrians. Blue and gold streaks illuminate City Hall.The Sabres plan to make the fandom more obvious by passing out free “Let’s Go Buffalo” yard signs at Tops Friendly Markets locations on April 17
Meanwhile, Sabres merch has been “flying off the shelves” for the first time in years. One store owner compared the sudden shift in sales to a rekindled relationship.
“It was like, ‘Hey, I’m not talking to you right now, but I’m going to eventually come back when you get right,’” BFLO Store owner Nathan Mroz told The News last week. “When that happens, the floodgates open."
Sabres fans shop for merch at KeyBank Center. Joed Viera/Buffalo News
Downtown bars and restaurants are gleefully surfing the new waves of customers brought downtown by the Sabres’ gravitational pull. Business is already up. The playoffs are expected to be a big boost.
“To add in these playoff games, for these local businesses, it’s money and business that we weren’t really depending on,” said Ring, the Rec Room owner. “Things like this really kind of help sustain a business.”
Thursday night’s Sabres game, which the team won 5-0, was themed “Throwback Thursday.” Fans sang along to 2000s hits and wore vintage gear. They shared old memories.
“I was introduced to the Sabres when I was 8 years old. They played in Memorial Auditorium … and they played the Philadelphia Flyers back in 1974-1975, for the Stanley Cup … We had the French Connection … We had the fog …” Saj reminisced.
But nobody seemed that interested in stewing in nostalgia, which is more attractive when the past feels better than the present. Thursday’s crowd spoke of today’s Sabres. They have new favorite players.
It was a game of firsts. The first shutout for third-string goalie Colten Ellis. The first live game for fans like 5-year-old Lucas Hooton and 77-year-old Jo Ann Bisesi.
“It’s beautiful,” Bisesi said. “The young people today have so much to look forward to.”
After the win, fans descended the arena’s escalators at the beginning of the long march to their cars. Their elation sparked. They sounded like birds in a rainforest. They weren’t speaking English as you hear after a Bills game: “Hey-ey-ey-ey!” Instead, they whooped and chirped and cawed. Electricity is its own language.
Sabres fans spent a lot of years remembering better days. As they look to the playoffs, they’re just happy that this is not one of those years.
