The last time the National Hockey League shut down during the Winter Olympics, the fortnight off came as a welcome relief to the Buffalo Sabres, not to mention a dwindling fan base.
The 2001-02 break came with Buffalo stumbling toward the first of three straight non-playoff seasons. In their first season since the departure of Dominik Hasek, the Sabres didn't have an identity, much firepower or many fans.
The collapse of Adelphia and ensuing indictments of owner John Rigas and two of his sons, which would leave the franchise in bankruptcy, its future in Buffalo in doubt, were still months away. To most Sabres fans, Tom Golisano was little more than a rich guy from Rochester who liked to run for governor.
Three of the last five games before the break ended in 2-2 ties, with no shootout to cleanse the palate of the tedium wrought by an increasingly dull NHL. Fittingly, the third tie came in the last pre-Olympics contest against New Jersey, the franchise that made the neutral-zone trap a household hockey term. In an ever-decreasing number of households, that is.
This time around, with the reborn league shutting down and dozens of star players trekking off to Turin to represent their respective countries, fans are in danger of suffering symptoms of withdrawal.
Buffalo entered its final pre-break game at Carolina on Sunday on yet another hot streak, having won seven of eight.
The one loss demonstrates just how far the Sabres have come. After Thursday's overtime 3-2 loss in Montreal, coach Lindy Ruff called his team's effort "dismal," while his players all but apologized for the performance.
Go back four years -- or even two, before the lockout that wiped out the 2004-05 season, for that matter -- and escaping a road game with a point would have just about been cause for spraying champagne around the locker room.
These Sabres wasted no time expunging any lingering effects from the loss in Montreal. In their last home game until the Atlanta Thrashers visit on March 1, they dominated the Florida Panthers throughout most of a 5-3 win, backboned by two goals from rookie Thomas Vanek.
The pair of tallies gave Vanek 18 goals for the season, one of seven Buffalo players with at least 14 after 55 games. To show how much the team and the game have changed, only six members of the 2001-02 squad managed 14 for the entire 82-game season.
The safe, defense-oriented style Ruff favored before the lockout helped keep the scoring totals down. Even in the more wide-open post-lockout NHL, though, strong goaltending has been the foundation of Buffalo's success. While Ryan Miller's goals-against and save percentage numbers are better than Martin Biron's, their winning percentages were nearly identical after the Florida game.
It was easy to dismiss Buffalo's success earlier in the season as something of a fluke, an aberration fostered by the Sabres' ability to adapt to the new rules. But Buffalo piled up 76 points in the first 55 games, good for fourth place in the Eastern Conference, just a couple of wins short of the top spot.
At that pace, the Sabres would finish with 113 points, the same as the 1974-75 team that reached the Stanley Cup Finals before falling to Philadelphia.
That squad featured the French Connection of Gilbert Perreault, Rick Martin and Rene Robert, along with the likes of Danny Gare, Jim Schoenfeld, Jerry Korab, Jim Lorentz, Roger Crozier, Bill Hajt, Craig Ramsay and Don Luce, to name half the roster.
That those names still occupy such a central spot in the region's collective sporting consciousness says a lot about the franchise's struggles since.
There's the '99 team that also reached the Finals, but the main memories from that run remain Hasek and "No goal."
These Sabres have a prime opportunity to leave their own mark and, with only Chris Drury headed for Turin, they should be well-rested for the most promising stretch run of the millennium.
The prospect is just one more reason to look forward to the Olympics ending.
And another cheerful thought while trying to avoid NBC's 97,274 hours of coverage from Turin -- pitchers and catchers report this week.
The first arrivals in Florida and Arizona are scheduled for Wednesday, when Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, Seattle, San Francisco, Texas and both teams with Los Angeles in the name open camp.
The New York Yankees' faithful will have to wait another day for yet another disappointing season to begin, with the batteries of Atlanta, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, San Diego, Tampa Bay and the New York Mets also arriving on Thursday.
Everybody else gets started by the end of the week, capped by the Minnesota Twins on Sunday.
For a century, the satisfaction fans derive from spring training emanates mainly from knowing that someone, somewhere is playing baseball in warm weather, even if you're spending your days trudging through snowdrifts.
This year's annual ritual has a little extra spice, though, with the inaugural World Baseball Classic set for March 3 to 20. With major-league stars scattered among the rosters of their various countries of origin, there's sure to be plenty of exclamations of national pride and, quite probably, shocking acts of unruliness by their countrymen.
Mostly, though, the WBC will provide MLB fans with one more excuse for their underachieving favorite team: "Well, if Jeter hadn't played in that stupid tournament ..."
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | Feb. 14 2006 |