Empty spots in your Sabres memory

[Stoner]

In looking up seasons for the Best Finishes thread, I saw mention of Danny Gare beating the Islanders in Game 2 at the Aud in OT to give the Sabres a 2-0 lead in the series. I'll be damned if I remember that one. And... there are no videos of it anywhere to even jog my memory.

I recall the spring of 75 like it was this morning (I'd say yesterday, but my memory ain't what it used to be). I went to my first games at the Aud in the spring of 78, including a playoff game, and my recollection of that Pens series in 79 is vivid.

In between are special memories, but so many gaps, especially, for some reason, the playoffs of 76 and 77. (I don't remember Luce vs. St. Louis in OT, either.)

For you, are there any empty spots?

[drnkirishone]

just about all of the Eichel era

[mjd1001]

Most of the Hasek Vezina seasons with the Sabres. 

Still were my favorite team, but for a few years I didn't get to see many games as I moved out of WNY then to the Boston area and was working so much I didn't have time to catch many games on cable (even when I COULD find a Sabres game to see)

[Weave]

Lots of them.  While I have been a fan for as long as I have a memory, I never obsessed over the details of any given season.  The big picture items remain seared into my grey matter, but the individual items that make up the bigger picture get lost for every year.

Frankly, I am amazed at the level of detail you guys retain from even 12-15 seasons ago.

[LabattBlue]

3 minutes ago, drnkirishone said:

just about all of the Eichel era

Could easily replace Eichel with Pegula.  

[HoosierDaddy]

I remember being at a game when I was a kid where there was a brawl at the end of the pregame skate after the refs left the ice. I can't remember who the other team was, but it was in the Aud and had to be sometime between 1985 and when I left for college in 1992. Does anyone remember this?

[MattPie]

- Mid-80s to mid-90s: in the 90s I started watching the replays at night when I was in high school and college (early 80s I'd watch with my Dad, but he got fed up)

- 2002-2005: didn't have center ice, too responsible to stay up to 2AM to watch the replay

- 2017-current: realized that I had things that brought me more joy than watching the Sabres; I stuck with the tank teams for awhile but eventually gave up

 

Edited April 18, 2022 by MattPie

[mjd1001]

3 minutes ago, HoosierDaddy said:

I remember being at a game when I was a kid where there was a brawl at the end of the pregame skate after the refs left the ice. I can't remember who the other team was, but it was in the Aud and had to be sometime between 1985 and when I left for college in 1992. Does anyone remember this?

I was at an Amerks game where that happened when I was a little kid in the Aud..   Amerks playing in the aud....big pre-game brawl with no refs....the player "Andy Ristau" stands out in my head.  1987.

here is a link. Me and my friend were standing in the front row of the oranges just watching it....https://www.upi.com/Archives/1987/04/17/A-brawl-before-an-American-Hockey-League-game-that/6488545630400/

Edited April 18, 2022 by mjd1001

[Weave]

33 minutes ago, HoosierDaddy said:

I remember being at a game when I was a kid where there was a brawl at the end of the pregame skate after the refs left the ice. I can't remember who the other team was, but it was in the Aud and had to be sometime between 1985 and when I left for college in 1992. Does anyone remember this?

It was an Amerks game as MJD1001 mentions.

[Lanny]

The 4 years I was at college didn't happen. 

[Marvin]

5 minutes ago, Lanny said:

The 4 years I was at college didn't happen. 

Welcome back.

[ubkev]

I was pretty much blacked out from 06-09. Good times.

[SwampD]

Huge gaps.

70s, knew they were a thing. That was about it.

Listened to the Sabres on the radio mostly during the 80s while playing street hockey or shooting against the garage door.

Didn't have a tv from around 1988 until 2001, but watched every playoff game of the Hasek era at a friends apartment or bar in NYC.

Probably have missed only a handful of games since the 04-05 lockout, though.

[dudacek]

It don’t think there has a ever been a time I haven’t followed them closely since I was about 7.

Maybe it was a little less obsessive in the early ‘90s (college/marriage) and in the post-Hasek/prelockout period (not sure why), but there’s never been a time I couldn’t tell you the roster right down to the top prospects.

As for specifics about games and plays, aside from the ubiquitous highlights, they don’t stick in my mind the way trades and draft picks and lineups do.

[Weave]

2 minutes ago, dudacek said:

It don’t think there has a ever been a time I haven’t followed them closely since I was about 7.

Maybe it was a little less obsessive in the early ‘90s (college/marriage) and in the post-Hasek/prelockout period (not sure why), but there’s never been a time I couldn’t tell you the roster right down to the top prospects.

As for specifics about games and plays, aside from the ubiquitous highlights, they don’t stick in my mind the way trades and draft picks and lineups do.

You and I appear to share the same memories.  This lines up well with my experience.

[Doohicksie]

2 hours ago, Lanny said:

The 4 years I was at college didn't happen. 

That's where it started for me, but frankly it's all of the 1980s and most of the 1990s.

I entered college in 1984 in a city outside of the Buffalo sports sphere.  Was busy carousing and drinking to pay attention to sports.  My first job post-college was in Los Angeles and I didn't pay much attention to sports in those years.  Then I moved to north Texas, in the time prior to the Stars move there.   I got laid off there and moved to Detroit.  I'd been so unplugged from the NHL for so long the Sabres had become just another team. 

The Red Wings were a perennial bubble team but started to get good.  In following them I was drawn back to the NHL.  I was all in when they won the Cup in 1997 and 1998.  Just after their 1997 Cup win we moved back to Texas.  We (the wife and I) wanted to continue to follow the Wings so we got Center Ice.  With the package we also got the ability to watch the Sabres.  It wasn't until late in the 1998-99 season that I became aware that the Sabres were any good.  I missed the Cup finals that year because I'd voluteered to travel with my son's Boy Scout troop to their summer camp trip in Colorado.  I was actually listening to the game in the box van we rented to carry equipment when Hull scored the Cup winner, listening to a station in Dallas 700 miles away.

After that I started to follow the Sabres more and eventually they overtook the Red Wings again in my fan brain.  To me Lindy Ruff was always a defenseman, never a forward.  The May Day! call is something I've only seen in replays.  I missed the entire LaFontaine-Mogilny era.  I was a fan from Day One but took almost two decades off.  That's a pretty big blind spot. 

[French Collection]

I started out as a Habs fan, my family is French and we only had the CBC feed every Saturday. While visiting relatives that had cable, I watched some Sabres games and was hooked on The French Connection. 

The viewings were few and far between except during the playoffs. There are a lot of gaps for me as I have never seen most of the games. I haven’t missed many in the last 10-12 years, thanks to an NHL package. Unfortunately, that timespan has been bad.

 

[Pimlach]

I had a really great example … but, uh, um, now I can’t remember it? 

[Stoner]

Just now, Pimlach said:

I had a really great example … but, uh, um, now I can’t remember it? 

I think they took the TV out of your hospital room.

[matter2003]

My first memories of watching the Sabres were when I was 6 or 7 and watched the games on WGRZ back in the early 80s.

Missed the 70s and what might have been the golden years for this team, I was born in 75 so too young to remember the Stanley Cup Finals

[Skibum]

I lived out of market and didn't own a TV from 1996-2011, but I still made it to the bar once in a while to watch, particularly during the Briere/Drury era. But honestly, my best "Sabres" memory from that era was Hasek winning the '98 Nagano Olympics by himself. 

My interest waned pretty hard after July 1, 2007. The team clearly had no chance being built around Vanek. I pretty much stopped watching altogether somewhere around Eichel's 2nd year. The team was just unwatchable to me, and beyond the Sabres losing, I felt that the NHL game overall had become far less exciting. I'll be honest, I miss the brawls and the face-washings. And if I hear 'Let Me Clear My Throat' one more time, I swear...

I literally just started watching them again a few weeks ago. I guess you can call me a fair-weather fan, but at the same time I have never stopped watching the Bills, no matter how bad they have been. I guess a bad football team is somehow less pathetic than a bad hockey team. 

[PerreaultForever]

I get the order/chronology of some things mixed up at this stage and there are some swiss cheese holes in my memory, but that's pretty much true for everything. Also had university years and other distractions like many people. 

[Eleven]

Lanny!

 

[Contempt]

The last ten years. I know they sucked and who the primary figures were but there is a lot of minutia that just falls away. Just the other day I forgot Ron Rolston exists. It ruined my day when I remembered.

[Sabel79]

I was in the shower the other day trying really, really hard to remember the name of a player I was thinking about.  Not Steve Ott, the other one.  Took me awhile, but finally came up with Raffi Torres.  
 

Remember that?  Wild.