BUFFALO, N.Y. — Saturday’s game here in Buffalo against the Toronto Maple Leafs was another example where the Leafs' fans came in and overtook the Sabres building.
Back in the days of Dominik Hasek, Michael Peca, Ryan Miller, Chris Drury, and Daniel Briere, the rivalry was there, but the building might be 10% to 20% Toronto fans. On Saturday, it took me over 40 seconds to be able to find a Sabres jersey in the stands. I would estimate the crowd was about 80% Leafs fans.
The few Buffalo fans that were there were trying to get a “Let’s Go Buffalo!” chant going, but they would quickly get drowned out with “Go Leafs, Go!”
For 13 years, this franchise has given its fans nothing to want to come to the Toronto game. They would rather make quite a bit of money by selling their tickets to fans that are willing to pay premium prices because it’s still half of what a ticket would cost in Toronto.
The knife was placed squarely in the back when Toronto winger Max Domi tweeted out, “Leaf nation was BUZZING tonight! What an atmosphere. What a night for 34! Huge w. Best crowd of the year.”
This tweet should be a huge source of embarrassment for owner Terry Pegula. His fans have no reason to come cheer on their team and haven’t had one for 13 years, so they’d rather sell their tickets to the enemy.
This isn’t about fans booing or chanting for Don Granato to be fired. This is about having your home rink become the home of the Toronto Maple Leafs every time they show up. Dylan Cozens understands.
“I know we have to earn it, and we all know in this room that we have to earn it, and we understand it's been a long time, and we have to get that support back by being a good team and winning games. It comes down to that. We can work as hard as we want, but at the end of the day, to get that support back, we have to win games, and it’s going to be a big summer for all of us, as we have a lot to prove,” he said.
Back when the Sabres were good, Sabres fans would go into Carolina, Florida, and Columbus and totally take over their arenas in the same way. I don’t see that anymore.
When the Sabres were winning five out of six games at home, the fans were loud and really got behind the team. I didn’t hear one boo in any of those six games. This city wants to love their hockey team, but you can’t have multiple games in the first three months of the season, where the compete wasn’t good enough.
You also can’t have a team that isn’t hard to play against. Buffalo has a few players that are hard to play against, but not enough.
I was here when fans wouldn’t dream of selling their tickets to the enemy because they wanted to be in the arena to cheer their team on. This organization has a long way to go before that becomes a reality again.