Cheering for the blue and gold -- 10 years after, true Sabres fans, as my friend Darryl G. Smart has told me, still don't fully accept the team's switch to black and red -- means one of two things: Either you're an American who's embraced a foreign game is the greatest of all, or that you grew up in southern Ontario and were made of strong enough stuff to resist succumbing to incurable Leafs fever. In other words, you don't run with the traffic, and that makes you a little crazy, and special, as far as sportsfans go.
It seemed almost inevitable the injuries on defence would hand the Eastern final to Carolina. However, the Sabres had the lead with 20 minutes to play in Game 7 before the Hurricanes restored the natural order and won 4-2 last night to advance to the Stanley Cup final.
(Early prediction on the final: Scott Burnside of ESPN.com is taking Carolina in 6. It says here that with Dwayne Roloson cementing his Conn Smythe credentials by stealing the Oilers a win or two, it will take seven games for the Hurricanes. But that's for another time.)
Sabre-fan pain, as I've come to realize this spring, is a lot different from Leaf-fan pain. It's not simply because Buffalo fans have actually seen their team play in the Stanley Cup final in the past 35 years. Leaf-fan pain is a Paradise Lost kind of feeling. There's more to it than that.
Sabre-fan pain is a little like being from a small town. It means being ambivalent -- at best -- about your surroundings, but always getting your back up when others poke fun at your background. It makes it hard to trust your triumphs, since deep-down, you know who you are, and you're not sure if your time will ever come.
You don't feel you have that status that embodied by city folk and the insufferable nouveau riche who believe they've got everything coming to them. Sabres fans can go on and on about how their team is the most underrated in the NHL (which it is), or how they would they were the best team before the injuries hit, or how it always gets overlooked thanks to the double whammy of its small-market status and the Toronto-centric media.
Ultimately, it's like trying to argue for your hick town: In the end, you know it sounds like you're trying to convince yourself instead of convincing the city slicker with his painted-on smirk.
Just to complete the analogy, Oilers fans, after a long hiatus, once again are the city folk. Carolina, as a team that is making its second trip to the Stanley Cup final since being dropped in the middle of NASCAR country a decade ago, qualify as the nouveau riche.
So please, have a little empathy for any Sabres fans you meet today. The odds of such an encounter are pretty good, since the state of the local economy in western New York has forced them to spread out all over the place.
Should any start into a rant of, "First the no-goal in '99, now this," referring to Brian Campbell's delay-of-game penalty that led to Rod Brind'Amour's series-winning goal with 8:38 to play, stop him right there. It is a stupid rule, and yes, it should be changed. (Yours truly noted this after the Oilers had to kill off a late penalty in their clinching game against Anaheim.)
However, going in with only two able-bodied regulars on D is high on the list of things a team can't do if it hopes to win a big playoff game. By that point, Carolina scoring the game-winner seemed to be just a matter of when.
Even when it was Buffalo led 2-1 after two periods and a fever built -- however fleeting -- for a Sabres upset, I looked over at colleague in the newsroom and said: "4-2 Carolina," anticipating the Hurricanes popping in the tying and go-ahead goals, followed by a clinching empty-netter.
Had to call the way I saw it.
It didn't quite happen that way -- Ryan Miller was still in the net when Justin Williams swooped in to flip in a rebound for an insurance goal with 52 seconds left. No matter. The script played out as expected, with the Sabres' push as the final minutes melted away having a certain noble, doomed quality that I'm sure the hyperbolists in the press box will have great fun with over the next 24-hour news cycle.
Of course, the Sabres fan knows whatever's written or said is just a vapour. Make, no mistake, it was a effort that fully deserves to be set off with 10-dollar adjectives. In the end, though, that's all it was. When you're still playing hockey on the first of June, there is no try.
OTHER BUSINESS
- A quick note on the staph infection that kept Buffalo's Jay McKee out of Game 7. James Mirtle noted this is quite common in the NHL, "what with open wounds coming in contact with bacteria-encrusted equipment." It's a long-running joke that nothing smells quite like a hockey dressing room, but in his autobiography released a couple years ago, Phil Esposito (or his ghost-writer) spoke about the "NHL rash" that expedited his decision to retire. Here's hoping that McKee doesn't suffer any long-lasting effects, and that someone eventually figures out a better way to dry equipment so players' health isn't unnecessarily put in jeopardy.
- With Mariano Rivera idled, the Detroit Tigers rallied for two runs in the ninth last night off Kyle Farnsworth and avoided being swept by the Yankees. Sorry, Detroit. Best record in the majors or not, you still have to eat at the kids' table.
- Apparently Chris Berman doesn't believe the rules of media access apply to him. (Via Deadspin.)
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