TheAud

I was a bit young when the 12-6 game vs. the Soviets occurred (although it was always in my consciousness as a young Sabres fan) but this thread spurred on a search for highlights of this game, a 3-2 win for USA vs. Czechoslovakia in the Canada Cup series in a game played in the Aud. The link is a bit weird in that it shows an early US goal and then just a couple minutes of random shots on goal. I couldn't find a longer clip. I attended it with my father and a couple things stick with me to this day. The crowd was electric as the Miracle on Ice buzz from 1980 was still present in terms of USA Hockey popularity. And it was Buffalo... Housely and Barrasso were both on team USA and Barrasso was phenomenal. I remember after some save sequences late in the game the Czech players were tapping his goalie pads in recognition of how badly he was robbing them. Hasek is obviously the greatest goalie to play as a Sabre, and Ryan Miller had his moments, but I think people tend to forget how good Barrasso was in those early years in his career in Buffalo. Speaking of Hasek...I have to admit that until I searched for this video I did not realize he was the Czech goalie that day...and at age 19 no less!

Your personal dislike of the Pegula's really shades your comments . For example it's not inconsistent to wish there was more scoring in the NHL, but still be happy when the Sabres win some games that happen to be low scoring. I agree the NHL needs more scoring. Most NHL arenas have annoying PA music and announcers. Ever hear them go "Whooo!" in Boston? Awful.

A billionaire charters a flight for sponsors of his football team and that links directly to season ticket prices the following season for his hockey team? OK, whatever.

Glad to hear you're on-board with historic 20th century events! Sorry for the hyperbole. I watched almost every game of Levy's tenure with the Bills, and probably 90% of the games since. He is far and away the best coach they've had, although I wasn't around for Lou Saban (I was for Chuck Knox, he was over rated). I was actually at the 4th Super Bowl game where they lost to the Cowboys after leading by 6 at half. That Cowboys team was unstoppable in the 2nd half. It wasn't a coaching issue. Anyway, some subjective and objective data can be found in this article: http://www.footballperspective.com/records-of-great-coaches-against-great-coaches/ Short story is that ESPN ranked Levy as 17th all time NFL coach in a poll in 2013 and his career regular season record head-to-head vs. all other coaches in the Top 25 was 50-44 and in the playoffs it was 7-6. That may not sound great, being only a little over .500 win % but remember it's against the other 24 top coaches of all time (of course that's a subjective list, so let's just say 24 other great coaches) and includes his years with the Chiefs. Marv wasn't the greatest coach ever but when he was outcoached it was typically by another great coach, and they usually didn't beat him the next time.

I am curious as to who you 'hear' things from regarding Marv Levy. Yes, four consecutive Super Bowl appearance achieved in spite of Marv's bad coaching. That's revisionist history on par with Holocaust and Moon Landing deniers.

He is a rookie: Rookie Qualifications To be considered a rookie, a player must not have played in more than 25 NHL games in any preceding seasons, nor in six or more NHL games in each of any two preceding seasons. Any player at least 26 years of age (by September 15th of that season) is not considered a rookie.

However "Small market" isn't based on population alone. Buffalo is a very small market city compared with Phoenix, Tampa, Charlotte, etc but is effectively a large market team when it comes to hockey. Canadian cities the same size or even smaller than Buffalo might be large market, or at least mid-market, cities in terms of hockey given the fanaticism of the population regarding hockey. I think the fundamental question is whether hockey is better served expanding in places where it is revered or at least strongly followed as a dominant regional sport, or whether it should continue to expand to large markets where it can hope for a small but potentially proftiable niche position among football, basketball, baseball or whatever. The Atlanta/Calgary and Winnipeg/Phoenix-Atlanta/Winnipeg chain of franchise moves would seem to be case studies for the former, but who knows.

Fascinating article on this topic from Nate Silver over 1 year ago in NY Times: http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/31/why-cant-canada-win-the-stanley-cup/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0 The summary of where he thinks the NHL could profitably expand are (in priority order): 1) Toronto (2 additional teams) 2) Montreal (additional team) 3) Vancouver (additional team) 4) Quebec City In other words, Canada. Plenty of things to potentially pick at in the analysis but it certainly makes interesting points too. Las Vegas certainly looks like a bad idea. Seattle is a lot more viable than Vegas but still not a great idea unless you get some of the potential Vancouver 2nd team fans in the process (since a 2nd team in Vancouver isn't going to happen).