The Sabres have officially clinched the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs! After beating the Boston Bruins in game six of a seven game series–winning four of the games–they now advance to round two. This series is against the Montreal Canadiens (The Habs), and started on Wednesday May 6th in Buffalo with a Sabres win! The next game is tonight, Friday May 8th. Buffalo has home-ice advantage for this series. That means we will have the majority of games at home, which is very exciting as a Buffalo sports fan, because home games mean the city goes all out.
The largest piece of culture shock moving to Buffalo this year is how seriously Buffalo takes sports. Now, I love sports, I’m an athlete at UB and get easily invested in fandoms. But Buffalo is unlike what you see elsewhere. This city breathes the Bills, the Sabres, the Bandits and the Bison.
Honestly, I think this is my favorite part of Buffalo, how invested and patriotic they are about their home teams, and their Buffalo pride. As I said before, I love sports, but I was never super invested in actually watching sports; also, I am part of more of a baseball family so there was not a lot of football and hockey spectating in my house growing up. That being said, I quickly picked up on the rules, regulations, and customs of the Bills and Sabres. I even went to a Bills game in November and two Sabres games; one in October against the Detroit Red Wings and one in March against the San Jose Sharks. Personally, I have gotten way more invested in hockey than football throughout the year. I like the fast pace and trying to keep up with the puck. So it has been very exciting to see the Sabres have a good season this year.
If you haven’t had the opportunity to go to a game I definitely recommend it. Sabres early season games tend to have pretty cheap tickets so next fall would be a great opportunity to go! The energy at the games is infectious. In the game against the Sharks there was a wave that went around three times! There is also a fan-cam and it is very active during the game, my friend and I got on in October. One of my personal favorite things is to keep an eye out for Sabretooth–the mascot. He is this orange and black striped chubby cat/tiger looking thing (a sabretooth, which is now extinct). Sabretooth has a fun and sassy personality, he dances around the arena and gets the crowd energized.
The Sabres are known for not being the best team in hockey, they have not made it to the playoffs since 2011, which is why this season is so amazing. The second half of their season was thrilling and made the lead up to the playoffs something to watch. I (and everyone else in Buffalo) obviously wanted to celebrate their season and playoff run. Luckily, Buffalo does not let a major sports event go by without celebrating it. Every home game during the playoffs, including tonight, has a free watch party at Canalside, right next to Keybank Center. I went to game five, last Tuesday night. Although we lost that night, I had one of the most fun nights of my spring semester. And while I would have loved an easy Buffalo win, it was a great game of hockey to watch because it went into 9 minutes of overtime before Boston won.
To get to Canalside I took the metro from UB South Campus (University Station) and took it down to the Canalside Station stop. From there the whole block was reserved for this Sabres watch party. My friends and I entered the Canalside park, they had metal detectors for safety, but it was a completely free event (even the metro was free on Tuesday). There was a stage with music and announcements, and two screens – a big one by the stage, and a slightly smaller one to the side. There were food trucks and porta potties. Honestly I was really surprised by how official the event was and that it was free, given the services provided. But I am realizing that’s just Buffalo–energy has to be put into cheering for our local teams. And it would be very easy to make fun of, but I love it.
In case you have no idea how the playoffs work (I didn’t two weeks ago), we just won round one and now we go onto round two. Both the first and second round are against people in our division, so round two is the divisional final. Then the four division finalists advance to conference finals. After all of that, the two winners go to the Stanley Cup final. Each series is best out of seven (so first team to four wins in the series). Basically, it is a long run…the Stanley Cup Finals are not until June.
Be sure to tune into the rest of the playoffs and cheer for the Sabres!