sabres 4 – penguins 2

November 18, 2006 under Buffalo Sabres, Hockey, NHL, Pittsburgh Penguins

BlackBerry 8705g with a Penguins logo
Last night, Dena and I went to Buffalo to watch the Sabres take on the Penguins, which was televised on TSN. The Sabres, currently being the best team in the NHL, didn’t have much trouble last night. When Sid Crosby, Evgeni Malkin or (to a lesser extent) Jordan Staal weren’t on the ice, Pittsburgh didn’t have much hope of mustering anything offensively. Crosby’s first goal of the night was brilliant, though – Biron had left the tiniest opening available on the short side, and after a couple of nice dekes, he managed to go short side. It’s amazing to think that the average age of the combination of Crosby, Malkin and Staal is only 19. Also, Crosby and Staal are still technically of-age to play for Team Canada in the annual World Junior Tournament this December, but they likely won’t. The Penguins definitely have the potential to become a great team with those young stars of theirs. It makes me hope that Jim Balsillie moves the Penguins to Kitchener-Waterloo even more 🙂

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sabres 4 – flyers 2

February 3, 2006 under Buffalo Sabres, Hockey, Life, NHL, Philadelphia Flyers, Sports

Yesterday, Dena and I went to our first regular season NHL game. Last year, we saw a Bulldogs / Amerks game at Copps Coliseum, but that’s the AHL and not the biggest of the big leagues – but pretty close. I’ve also seen a couple of “Baby Leafs” Blue ‘n’ White games…again AHL. A couple of years ago, we went to a Sabres / Lightning pre-season game at The Aud, but The Aud isn’t an NHL arena.

Last night, along with my parents and 400 Kitchener Rangers fans, we went to HSBC Arena in Buffalo to watch the Sabres take on the Flyers. It was a seven-bus convoy to Buffalo to see two Kitchener Rangers alumni; Derek Roy and Michael Richards.

Being an Ontario boy, I’d always thought that my first NHL game would’ve been a Leafs or Sens game. Actually, I’d prefer to see the Flames but I’m not sure when I’ll ever actually be in Calgary – it’s a bit of a trek 🙂 So yes, I’m one of those loser hockey fans who’s played 12 years of competitive organized hockey, countless pickup and street hockey games, attended many OHL and CCHA games and watched plenty of hockey faithfully on TV since I can remember, but never have been to an NHL game in an NHL arena. Sure, Kitchener is super close to Toronto so making it to a Leafs game should be a snap, right? Wrong. Decent tickets at the ACC are crazy-expensive (the Leafs aren’t the highest-grossing team in the NHL for no reason). Also, and it’s the story of my life, I never know the right people who have extra tickets or the availablity of a box seat. But Buffalo isn’t all that much further from Kitchener than Toronto and good Sabres tickets are really affordable.

All in all, it was a great game and a good time. Standing in the rain for an hour waiting so that most of the 400 Rangers fans could talk to Derek and Michael was pretty lame. But other than that, it was a good experience. Check out some pictures from last night.

Anybody have good seats at the Saddledome and a means to get to Calgary on the cheap that they’d like to share with me? 😉

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