Archives for October 3, 2011

‘I’ve been really excited about this trip for a while now. From a personal standpoint, I get to see a lot of my family. But for me the biggest thing is that there are a lot of Sabres fans in Austria, especially in the last six years that I’ve been playing in here – and a lot of them don’t get to come over to Buffalo. There’s going to be a lot of people in Berlin cheering us on and I can’t wait to skate out on the ice Saturday night.’

‘”It was a huge eye-opener,” defenseman Mike Weber told NHL.com. “These are the men and women that make it possible to do what we do. I’m extremely excited to meet these people and hear their stories.”‘

‘”I was looking forward to this all summer,” Hecht, a Mannheim native, said. “The way it has worked out now is a little bit disappointing. But that is the way it is. I have to get healthy for the season.”‘

‘Instead of walking around Germany Monday morning, about one-third of a group headed to Europe to see the Sabres play is stranded at Philadelphia International Airport.’

‘Cloudless skies and summer temperatures greeted the players on the opening leg of their trip abroad. An 80-degree day exposed the team to all that Heidelberg has to offer, everything from picnics and sunbathing along River Neckar to sausage and smoked beer on the patios of the old town.’

‘”I guess the next one is to stay here,” he said. “They say the easy part is getting here and the hard part is staying. I know I’ve got a lot of work to prove I can play in this lineup every night, and that’s what I’m trying to do now, show the coaching staff and the ownership and the GM that I can play here every night and I can get better and better, and I can help this hockey team win.”‘

‘There was no sluggishness out there, “No it felt pretty good out there besides the ice is an ocean.” With that bigger ice surface Vanek said, “It will be different for us because we come out of corners back home and it’s a scoring chance where here you’re still a mile away, but I think it’s going to be fun, we’re a good skating team and we’ll get used to it pretty quick.” Lindy Ruff said, “You’ll see a little bit of difference in the game. Outside the dots you’ve got the extra 20 feet that the players can operate on, inside the dots you’re looking at the same. You treat the game the same from the dots in and make sure you’re trying to play on the inside because you usually play well. If you get caught on the outside and handling the puck, you can look pretty good, but you don’t get too much done so in our case it’s try to play our game on this ice.’

‘”I think just to get the legs underneath you, and break up what’s going to be a long day. You want to make sure everyone stays on schedule. We want to get back on what would be our North American schedule.”‘

‘We spent some time with Hecht on Sunday afternoon after the team finished practice. He took us through the historic market section of Heidelberg, which is about 15-minutes from the house he grew up in. Hecht literally sounded like a tour guide at times… reeling off facts about the rich history of the region.’

‘The group took off from the Buffalo Niagara International Airport around 1:30 Sunday afternoon. According to tour director Barbara Hughes, they will arrive in Frankfurt and then travel to Mannheim to appear as special guests while the Sabres practice.’