As the Buffalo Sabres skated through their dream of an opening month, leading off the National Hockey League schedule with a record-tying 10 straight wins, the inevitable reality check loomed somewhere in the distance.
Who figured it would have lasted a whole week?
On Oct. 28, the Atlanta Thrashers snapped the winning streak before the Sabres could break the mark for wins to start a season they share with the 1993-94 Toronto Maple Leafs, much less think about the overall standard of 17 straight established by the Pittsburgh Penguins a year earlier.
And let's face it -- impressive as the Sabres were during the streak, the "record" itself was a wee bit artificial. Do wins in October somehow count more than February victories? And Toronto and Pittsburgh each accomplished their tears without the benefit of the shootout, which the Sabres used repeatedly to keep theirs alive. It's significantly easier to remain unbeaten and untied when a tie is impossible.
The Sabres played far better in the loss to Atlanta than they did five nights later in Boston, when they trailed 4-1 with nine minutes left, but ripped off three straight goals and won in another shootout.
Saturday night was a precise replay, except for the comeback part. Buffalo suffered its first regulation loss of the season, officially returning their skates to the ground.
More worrisome was the indefinite loss of Maxim Afinogenov, who left the game with an apparent separated shoulder. Coupled with Henrik Tallinder's broken wrist, expected to sideline the defenseman for at least a month, Buffalo faces its first personnel crisis of the young season.
Buffalo's ability to replace key players lost to injury or free agency has been one of the team's strengths over the past two seasons. Losing the hottest scorer in the NHL -- Afinogenov had seven goals and 10 assists in his last eight games before the injury -- without suffering a significant fall-off will be the Sabres' biggest test yet.
If Turner Gill's first year as head coach at the University of Buffalo turns out to be the pivotal season in the school's football history, the name James Starks will loom just as large in the story of the Bulls' turnaround.
The Niagara Falls High School graduate lifted the Bulls to their first win of the Gill era with an overtime touchdown run on opening night. And on Saturday, he led UB to arguably its biggest win since the program returned to college football's top level.
Starks, who played quarterback for the Wolverines, ran for touchdowns of 6, 19 and 16 yards as the Bulls put up 38 points in the second half to rally for a 41-14 win over Kent State on Saturday. He set up his first score with a 54-yard sprint and finished with 162 yards on 24 carries as UB (2-7) upset the Mid-American Conference co-leaders, winning its first league game of the season.
Joe Mesi has long talked about politics as a potential post-boxing career. Over the last couple weeks, he's launched his first campaign, but not for elected office.
Mesi is touring New York, trying to drum up support for his bid to get his boxing license back from the state. Late last year, a Nevada court lifted the suspension he received from that state's athletic commission after he suffered bleeding on his brain after his narrow decision win over Vassiliy Jirov in March 2004, allowing him to apply for a new license in any state.
He's fought four times this year -- once each in Puerto Rico, Montreal, Arkansas and Michigan.
New York, though, has some of the nation's strictest standards for licensing a fighter, including a policy that bars any boxer who has ever suffered a subdural hematoma.
Normal procedure is to simply apply for a license and await the commission's decision, but Mesi's management team believes the attempt would be futile. Besides the commission's history concerning brain bleeds, Mesi has a lawsuit pending against the commission, charging that his medical records were leaked in violation of medical privacy laws.
Since the members of the New York State Athletic Commission are appointed by the governor, the Mesi team is waiting to make their bid until after George Pataki leaves office at the end of the year, hoping that he'll get a friendlier reception from the new regime. In the meantime, his management team is working to return the fighter's profile to where it was before the injury.
"We do think it will be better with public support and political support," said Mesi spokesman Jim Cassidy.
The campaign included a visit to the Rochester Press Radio Club a couple weeks back and an appearance before the Knights of Columbus in Niagara Falls on Nov. 1.
You can't blame Mesi and his father and co-manager, Jack, for taking support wherever they can get it in their effort to overturn a long-standing policy that prevents him from plying his trade where he's the most marketable.
And you can understand Niagara Falls Mayor Vincenzo V. Anello jumping on stage with anyone who will let him, given the ongoing federal investigation triggered by the $40,000 he took from local businessman Joe Anderson in 2003, weeks before taking office. After all, his invitation to the big soiree starring Eliot Spitzer and Hillary Clinton at the Hearthstone Manor last Friday -- where almost every elected Democrat in Western New York spoke or got a round of applause -- apparently got lost in the mail.
Whether getting Anello's endorsement does anything for Mesi's chances with an athletic commission that will likely be appointed by New York's former attorney general, well, that's for someone else to decide.
More difficult to decipher was the Niagara Gazette's rather goofy coverage of the event, which claimed the newspaper "co-sponsored" the "press conference" at the Knights of Columbus hall.
A media outlet sponsoring a news conference? I'm not sure what that means. Perhaps the K. of C. should invoice the newspaper for half the cost of the evening's meal.
Mesi's spokesman seemed baffled by the newspaper's claim, as well.
Cassidy said Mesi spoke to the assembled members and that he believed the Gazette was the only media outlet on hand, raising another question -- is it really a press conference if there's hardly any press there?
"As far as I know, the Knights of Columbus sponsored the event," he said. "I know a reporter from the Gazette asked where the press conference was, but ..."
If Mesi needed inspiration for his comeback, he should have gotten plenty from Saturday night's heavyweight title fight between belt-holder Sergei Lyakhovich and Shannon Briggs.
Neither fighter did much of anything for the first 11 rounds, with Lyakhovich doing just enough to build a virtually insurmountable lead heading into the 12th.
With 30 seconds left, though, Briggs -- best known for winning an undeserved decision over George Foreman nine years ago in the grill pitchman's last fight -- landed a right that put Lyakhovich down.
The Russian native, who won the World Boxing Organization belt with a decision over Lamon Brewster, got up, but Briggs landed another right, then a combination before a wobbly Lyakhovich fell through the ropes and out of the ring entirely.
Briggs weighed 268 pounds, 41 more than in his bout against Foreman. He parlayed that win into a shot at Lennox Lewis, but got destroyed in five rounds. Subsequently, he dropped off the heavyweight radar, losing to trial horse Sedreck Fields and journeyman Jameel McCline.
Following the decision loss to McCline in April 2002, Briggs won 11 straight, but only one was against a name opponent, a seventh-round knockout of 44-year-old Ray Mercer in August 2005.
It used to be that you had to beat other contenders to get a title shot, or at least, like Briggs, stay busy. No more. Lyakhovich hadn't fought in a year-and-a-half before challenging Brewster.
The division has fallen on such hard times, Saturday's fight wasn't even the sport's marquee event of the evening. Instead, it was overshadowed by welterweight Floyd Mayweather's one-sided decision over Carlos Baldomir, an Argentinian unknown in this country until earlier this year.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | November 6 2006 |