Buffalo Sabres
The Buffalo Sabres are a professional ice hockey team based in Buffalo, New York. The Sabres compete in the National Hockey League as a member of the Atlantic Division in the Eastern Conference. The team was established in 1970, along with the Vancouver Canucks, when the league expanded to 14 teams. The Sabres have played their home games at KeyBank Center since 1996, having previously played at the Buffalo Memorial Auditorium since their inception. The Sabres are owned by Terry Pegula, who purchased the club in 2011 from Tom Golisano.
The team has twice advanced to the Stanley Cup Final, losing to the Philadelphia Flyers in 1975 and to the Dallas Stars in 1999. The Sabres, along with the Canucks, are the oldest active NHL franchises to have never won the Stanley Cup. The Sabres have the longest active playoff drought in the NHL at 14 seasons, which stands as an NHL record, and are tied with the New York Jets for the longest active playoff drought across the "Big 4" North American sports leagues.
History
Early years and the French Connection (1970–1981)
The Sabres, along with the Vancouver Canucks, joined the NHL in the 1970–71 season. Their first owners were Seymour H. Knox III and Northrup Knox, scions of a family long prominent in Western New York and grandsons of the co-founders of the Woolworth's variety store chain; along with Robert O. Swados, a Buffalo attorney. On the team's inaugural board of directors were Robert E. Rich Jr., later the owner of the Buffalo Bisons minor league baseball team; and George W. Strawbridge Jr., an heir to the Campbell Soup Company fortune. Buffalo had a history of professional hockey; immediately prior to the Sabres' establishment, the Buffalo Bisons were a pillar of the American Hockey League, having existed since 1940, winning the Calder Cup in their final season.Wanting a name other than "bison", the Knoxes commissioned a name-the-team contest. With names like "Mugwumps", "Buzzing Bees" and "Flying Zeppelins" being entered, the winning choice, "Sabres", was chosen because Seymour Knox felt a saber was a weapon carried by a leader, and could be effective on both offense and defense. The Knoxes tried twice before to get an NHL team, first when the NHL expanded in 1967, and again when they attempted to purchase the Oakland Seals with the intent of moving them to Buffalo. Their first attempt was thwarted when Pittsburgh Steelers owner Art Rooney persuaded his horse racing friends James and Bruce Norris to select Pittsburgh over Buffalo. The second attempt was due to the NHL not wanting an expansion market to give up on a team so soon, nor isolate the Los Angeles Kings from the rest of the NHL entirely. At the time of their creation, the Sabres created their own AHL farm team, the Cincinnati Swords. Former Toronto Maple Leafs general manager and head coach Punch Imlach was hired in the same capacity with the Sabres.
The Sabres' debut in 1970 also coincided with the AFL–NFL merger in which the Buffalo Bills joined the National Football League, and the National Basketball Association's Buffalo Braves also began to play. The city of Buffalo went from having no teams in the established major professional sports leagues to three in one off-season. Between the Braves and the Sabres, the Sabres would prove to be by far the more successful of the two; Paul Snyder, the nouveau riche Braves owner, publicly feuded with the old money Knoxes and the local college basketball scene, eventually losing those feuds and being forced to sell his team in 1976. Subsequent owners of the Braves, in a series of convoluted transactions tied to the ABA–NBA merger, moved the team out of Buffalo.
When the Sabres debuted as an expansion team, they used Aram Khachaturian's Armenian war dance "Sabre Dance" as their entrance song. The music has been associated with the team ever since, typically at the beginning of each period.
The consensus was that the first pick in the 1970 NHL amateur draft would be junior phenomenon Gilbert Perreault. Either the Sabres or the Canucks would get the first pick, to be determined with the spin of a wheel of fortune. Perreault was available to the Sabres and Canucks as this was the first year the Montreal Canadiens did not have a priority right to draft Quebec-born junior players. The Canucks were allocated numbers 1–10 on the wheel, while the Sabres had 11–20. When league president Clarence Campbell spun the wheel, he initially thought the pointer landed on one. While Campbell was congratulating the Vancouver delegation, Imlach asked Campbell to check again. As it turned out, the pointer was on 11, effectively handing Perreault to the Sabres. Perreault scored 38 goals in his rookie season of 1970–71, at the time a record for most goals scored by a NHL rookie, and he received the Calder Memorial Trophy as the NHL's rookie of the year.
File:French connection statue.JPG|thumb|left|A statue of the French Connection line stands outside KeyBank Center. Consisting of Gilbert Perreault, Rick Martin, and Rene Robert, they played together from 1972 to 1979.
During the team's second season, rookie Rick Martin, drafted fifth overall by Buffalo in 1971, and recently acquired Rene Robert joined Perreault to become one of the league's top forward lines in the 1970s. Martin broke Perreault's goal-scoring record as a rookie with 44 goals. They were nicknamed "The French Connection" after the movie of the same name and in homage to their French-Canadian roots. The Sabres made the playoffs for the first time in 1972–73, just the team's third year in the league, but lost in the quarterfinals in six games to the eventual Stanley Cup champion Montreal Canadiens.
After the 1973–74 season, which saw them miss the playoffs, the Sabres did an odd moment at the 1974 NHL amateur draft. General manager Punch Imlach annoyed at the length of the draft decided to draft a fictitious Japanese player named Taro Tsujimoto. The pick was later invalidated. That season, they tied for the best record in the NHL in the regular season. Buffalo advanced to the Stanley Cup Final for the first time in team history to play against the Philadelphia Flyers, a series which included the legendary Fog Game. Due to unusual heat in Buffalo in May 1975 and the lack of air conditioning in the Buffalo Memorial Auditorium, parts of the game were played in heavy fog that made players, officials, and the puck invisible to many spectators. During a face-off and through the fog, Sabres center Jim Lorentz spotted a bat flying across the rink, swung at it with his stick, killing it. It was the only time that any player killed an animal during an NHL game. The Sabres won that game thanks to Rene Robert's goal in overtime. However, Philadelphia would wind up taking the Stanley Cup in six games, winning the series 4–2.
Although Danny Gare scored 50 goals in the 1975–76 season, the team lost in the quarterfinals to the New York Islanders. The team did not return to the Final with the French Connection despite a Wales Conference championship in 1979–80 and being the first team to beat a team from the Soviet Union during the Super Series '76. The French Connection era ended with Robert's trade to the Colorado Rockies in 1979 and Martin's trade to the Los Angeles Kings in 1981. All three players have had their jersey numbers retired and a statue erected in their honor at KeyBank Center in 2012.
Adams/Northeast Division rivalries (1981–1996)
In 1981–82, the NHL realigned its conferences and adopted an intra-divisional playoff format for the first two rounds. It was the beginning of an era in which the Sabres would finish in the middle of the Adams Division standings with regularity, and then face the near-certainty of having to get past either the Boston Bruins or Canadiens to make it to the conference finals. Aside from first-round victories over Montreal in 1983 and Boston in 1993, the era saw the Sabres lose to division rivals Boston, the Quebec Nordiques and Montreal in the Adams Division semifinals a combined eight times, and miss the playoffs altogether in 1985–86 and 1986–87—only third and fourth times out of the playoffs in franchise history. Perrault reached the 500-goal mark in the 1985–86 season and retired after playing 20 games in 1986–87, 17 years after joining the Sabres as their first draft pick.The Sabres drafted Pierre Turgeon with the first pick in the 1987 NHL entry draft, and he quickly made an impact with the team. During his rookie season in 1987–88, he helped the Sabres reach the playoffs for the first time in three years. He was joined in 1989 by Alexander Mogilny, who with the help of Sabres officials became the first Soviet player to defect to the NHL. In the 1989–90 season, the Sabres would improve to finish with 98 points—third-best in the NHL, but the playoff futility continued with a first-round loss to Montreal. The Sabres traded Turgeon to the New York Islanders in 1991 as part of a blockbuster seven-player trade that brought Pat LaFontaine to Buffalo.
In 1992–93, goaltender Dominik Hasek joined the team in a trade from the Chicago Blackhawks. In the 1993 playoffs, the Sabres upset the Bruins in a four-game sweep in the Adams Division semifinals, their first playoff series victory in ten years. Brad May's series-winning goal in overtime of game four in Buffalo was made famous by Rick Jeanneret's "May Day!" call. However, the eventual Stanley Cup champion Montreal Canadiens swept the Sabres in the division final, with the Sabres losing all four games by a 4–3 score.
With the NHL adopting a conference playoff format for the 1993–94 season, the Sabres faced the New Jersey Devils in the Eastern Conference playoffs' first round. Despite Hasek winning a 1–0 quadruple overtime goaltending duel with the Devils' Martin Brodeur in game six, Buffalo would lose the series in seven games. Another first-round playoff loss to the Philadelphia Flyers in the lockout-shortened 1994–95 season was followed by a fifth-place finish in the Northeast Division in 1995–96, as the team missed the playoffs for the first time in nine years. It was the first season under head coach Ted Nolan and the last for the Sabres at Buffalo Memorial Auditorium. During his coaching tenure, Buffalo was referred to as the "hardest-working team in hockey". This season also featured the debut of veteran Randy Burridge, who earned a spot on the roster after he attended training camp on a try-out basis. He scored 25 goals that season and was second in team scoring to Pat LaFontaine. Burridge also earned the Tim Horton Award for being the unsung hero and was voted team most valuable player.
The final game in Memorial Auditorium was played on April 14, 1996, a 4–1 victory over the Hartford Whalers. Sabres principal owner Seymour Knox died a month later, on May 22, 1996.