LET'S GO BUFF-A-LO! And Also Drew Stafford

Buffalo is the first city I've lived in where I've been a fan of the teams that play there.  As I've mentioned many, many, many times, I grew up a Pirates fan, but I did it in Birmingham, Alabama. When the Pirates made three straight NLCSs, there was no one around to really share that excitement with.  When they completely fell apart in the ninth inning of Game Seven in 1992, there was no one to share the devastation.  (In fact, since I was in Braves territory, I actually got a fair amount of abuse.  To this day, I hate Braves fans, not because they started watching when the Braves got good - I mean, it's hard to remember now but the Braves were collosally bad in the 80's. I hate them because not only did they start watching, they pretended they'd been there all along. Bite me, Braves fans.)  The only teams that were really super popular in Birmingham were college football teams - Auburn and Alabama especially, of course - but I never really got into college football that much.  When everyone suddenly realized there was something special abou tthe 2005-2006 Sabres and that buzz and energy started building up in the whole city, I was very taken by that.  For me, that was almost as fun as the hockey itself.  

I mention all that because we missed the Pittsburgh game on Saturday night.  Our beautiful niece Jamie got married that afternoon so we were out celebrating.  We were just beginning to take our seats for the first part of dinner service when suddenly, someone started banging on their glass with their fork and yelled, "Wooooooooo!" Another group started chanting, "Sabres! Sabres!" while lightly pounding on their table.  The cheers jumped across the room from table to table.  That continued throughout the evening.  Any time someone clinked a glass, we said, "Are they kissing or did the Sabres score?" and everyone went scrambling for a phone.  I'll never get tired of that kind of thing. Sports are such a silly thing to feel united over, but it's so much fun, isn't it?

There are a number of things that have crossed my mind to blog about the last few days - how much I like Christian Ehrhoff, what I think about Mike Weber sitting, how I see the season shaking out - but I keep coming back to Drew Stafford which is crazy because I don't even LIKE Drew Stafford.  Even when he was kind of the darling of a certain segment of Sabres fan, I couldn't warm up to him.  The smarmy, too cool for school interviews drove me batty, and while he was clearly talented, he was just so all over the place, sometimes looking interested, sometimes looking like he didn't particularly care.  Those guys are the easiest to dislike, I think, the ones who are talented but satisfied with coasting on their talent rather than really working to maximise it.  

Even last season, when Stafford finally seemed to be putting everything together, I was very slow to embrace him.  I kept saying, "I'll believe it if it holds up all season," and even when it did, I was more than open to trading him and pretty reluctant about the idea of re-signing him.  It was a contract year, which always seems to help a guy pull it together, and well, how many times have we seen a player progress and then fall back into bad habits?  That's been a pretty regular theme with at least a couple of players in the Sabres' core these last few years.

But Stafford has been jumping out at me like crazy so far.  I keep thinking about a goal in the Carolina game.  It was actually a Derek Roy goal, but the play was all Stafford.  The NHL.com highlight is below, but it really wasn't what I was looking for.  MSG showed a slow-motion replay that focused on Stafford and you could see him realize he didn't have a very good shot, glance back and catch sight of Derek coming, slow down juuuuust enough that Roy could catch up, and then throw the puck at the net in a way that created a perfect layup for Derek.  He was clearly thinking all that in the span of a very few seconds.  It was amazing to me.  It's still amazing to me.

And that's just the most obvious example.  A lot of little things like that have popped up that have made me feel like last season's success was really inspired by maturity rather than dollar signs. That's really fun and awesome to see.  You're officially all right with me, Drew.