The Buffalo Bills were
Verfasst: 15. April 2019, 03:52BUFFALO , N.Y. (AP) so dull during their lean years, comedian Nick Bakay feared his body would fuse to the couch while watching them play.”It’s an incredibly disturbing image,” Bakay said of wasting away Sundays witnessing his hometown team sleepwalk through one loss after another during a 17-season playoff drought that ended last year.”I never missed a Bills game. But I was always slumped on my couch. I was never sitting forward. I was never jumping to my feet,” said Bakay, who wrote ”Paul Blart: Mall Cop” and its sequel, and produced and appeared on the TV sitcom ”King of Queens.” ”You sit on your couch, and your couch slowly eats you.”No different for fans of Buffalo’s other pro sports franchise, the NHL’s Sabres, who finished last for the third time in five years and extended their franchise-worst playoff drought to a seventh season.In a shot-and-a-beer town where the winters are interminably long, Buffalo sports fans ride things out on the notion of renewal always being just around the corner.And there’s a new, palpable optimism for this hearty fan base, thanks to a three-day stretch which showed potential to alter the trajectory of both teams.First, the Bills made a pair of splashes in the first round of the NFL draft on April 26 by trading up to select Wyoming quarterback Josh Allen and Virginia Tech linebacker Tremaine Edmunds.Two days later, the Sabres won the NHL draft lottery – something Buffalo lost the previous two times it finished last – and the opportunity to select projected No. 1 pick, Swedish defenseman Rasmus Dahlin.During the NFL draft, CBS Evening News anchor Jeff Glor got dirty looks from his wife during a rare dinner date sneaking peeks at the Bills’ picks. He then yelped with excitement upon learning the Sabres won the lottery while attending the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in Washington.”I had just resigned myself to never winning it ,” Glor said. ”But listen, I always have hope.”In Buffalo, there’s a fine line between affection and affliction for hope.”I always try to keep it in check a little bit,” said Glor, who grew up in the Buffalo suburb of Tonawanda.”Unfortunately, you get conditioned to where there are times you can be defeatist. And you try not to be. But you just don’t give up.”Fans have little choice but to persevere in a place where nickname-worthy moments are tied to losses.For the Bills, it’s ”Wide Right,” after kicker Scott Norwood missed a last-second field-goal attempt in a 20-19 loss to the New York Giants in the 1991 Super Bowl – the first of four consecutive Super Bowl losses.For the Sabres, it’s ”No Goal,” following a 2-1, triple-overtime loss to Dallas in Game 6 of the 1999 Stanley Cup Final. Brett Hull’s Cup-clinching goal stood even though replays showed his skate in the crease.Those were the so-called glory days.The Bills and Sabres have won five playoff games combined since 2008. By comparison, the NHL’s expansion Vegas Golden Knights have already won eight in their first year of existence.Buffalo joins Nashville, Tennessee, and Charlotte, North Carolina, as the only North American markets with two or more major pro teams to not have won a title.”I think it builds character in a way. I joke with my friends that one day my kids will have to go through therapy because we are Sabres , Bills and Mets fans,” said former VH1-cable TV chief Tom Calderone, who’s from Long Island, New York, but got his broadcasting start in Buffalo and maintains a home in the city. ”It’s easy to be a Cowboys fan or a Patriots fan. But it takes true dedication to be a Bills or Sabres fan.”Calderone sees more hope reflected in signs of resurgence for the city itself.The former site of the Erie Canal has been transformed from vacant gravel lots to parkland, a water park that doubles as an ice rink in winter, and an entertainment/hockey complex built by Bills and Sabres owner Terry Pegula.Housing prices have tripled and a medical corridor is newly bustling along Main Street, where shuttered and boarded-up buildings have been renovated or replaced by new steel and glass structures.Buffalo still has its rust-belt blemishes as one of the nation’s poorest cities. Racial inequities, failing schools and a crumbling infrastructure remain issues.The Bills and Sabres aren’t immune to troubling headlines. Last week, the two teams’ president Russ Brandon resigned amid allegations of having inappropriate relationships with female employees.Buffalo might never regain the industrial-age prominence it held in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when the city became a Great Lakes shipping hub as the gateway to the Erie Canal.Nor, however, should it become the punchline comedian Jon Stewart once delivered during a stop in Buffalo, calling the city the gateway to the Ontario border town of Fort Erie just across the Niagara River – population 30,000.Watching a documentary on former Bills running back O.J. Simpson, Bakay was reminded of the gloomy times in the 1970s when the steel mills began closing and legions of people left to find jobs.”It depressed me so much ,” he said. ”Every shot of Buffalo looked like a moose that farted into the sky.”The decline led to Buffalo investing its psyche into its sports teams as a way of remaining part of the national conversation.”Our teams were the only way we could punch back and say, `Yeah, we’re here,”’ Bakay said.Allen and the prospect of adding Dahlin have recaptured his imagination as to what’s possible.”It’s like all of a sudden we’ve got go-big-or-go-home-talent coming our way,” Bakay said.He recalled how the Bills once pinned their hopes on quarterback Trent Edwards, who earned the nickname ”Captain Checkdown” for being overly cautious.”After years of the Trent Edwards of the world, we get a kid who has that kind of talent,” Bakay said.Maybe, he’ll finally be able to get off that couch.”I don’t think we need any kind of help of, `Can we believe?’ We can believe in a bag of doughnuts,” Bakay said. ”But that weekend was like, `Oh my god. Things are really happening. Pinch me.”’—This story has been corrected to note Tom Calderone is from Long Island, New York. DENVER (AP) Nathan MacKinnon was given a day off from practice, which created a little stir on social media.Turns out, nothing to fear. The Colorado Avalanche just wanted to give their top scorer and Hart Trophy candidate a little rest Monday before embarking on the postseason.Not many gave this team much of a chance to make the playoffs at the beginning of the year. Understandably so considering they were coming off a 48-point season. But here the Avalanche are, about to face the top-seeded Predators in the first round beginning Thursday in Nashville.Colorado is rested , rejuvenated and carries a surge of momentum after needing to win its final game to secure its first postseason spot sincBUFFALO , N.Y. (AP) The Buffalo Bills were so dull during their lean years, comedian Nick Bakay feared his body would fuse to the couch while watching them play.”It’s an incredibly disturbing image,” Bakay said of wasting away Sundays witnessing his hometown team sleepwalk through one loss after another during a 17-season playoff drought that ended last year.”I never missed a Bills game. But I was always slumped on my couch. I was never sitting forward. I was never jumping to my feet,” said Bakay, who wrote ”Paul Blart: Mall Cop” and its sequel, and produced and appeared on the TV sitcom ”King of Queens.” ”You sit on your couch, and your couch slowly eats you.”No different for fans of Buffalo’s other pro sports franchise, the NHL’s Sabres, who finished last for the third time in five years and extended their franchise-worst playoff drought to a seventh season.In a shot-and-a-beer town where the winters are interminably long, Buffalo sports fans ride things out on the notion of renewal always being just around the corner.And there’s a new, palpable optimism for this hearty fan base, thanks to a three-day stretch which showed potential to alter the trajectory of both teams.First, the Bills made a pair of splashes in the first round of the NFL draft on April 26 by trading up to select Wyoming quarterback Josh Allen and Virginia Tech linebacker Tremaine Edmunds.Two days later, the Sabres won the NHL draft lottery – something Buffalo lost the previous two times it finished last – and the opportunity to select projected No. 1 pick, Swedish defenseman Rasmus Dahlin.During the NFL draft, CBS Evening News anchor Jeff Glor got dirty looks from his wife during a rare dinner date sneaking peeks at the Bills’ picks. He then yelped with excitement upon learning the Sabres won the lottery while attending the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in Washington.”I had just resigned myself to never winning it ,” Glor said. ”But listen, I always have hope.”In Buffalo, there’s a fine line between affection and affliction for hope.”I always try to keep it in check a little bit,” said Glor, who grew up in the Buffalo suburb of Tonawanda.”Unfortunately, you get conditioned to where there are times you can be defeatist. And you try not to be. But you just don’t give up.”Fans have little choice but to persevere in a place where nickname-worthy moments are tied to losses.For the Bills, it’s ”Wide Right,” after kicker Scott Norwood missed a last-second field-goal attempt in a 20-19 loss to the New York Giants in the 1991 Super Bowl – the first of four consecutive Super Bowl losses.For the Sabres, it’s ”No Goal,” following a 2-1, triple-overtime loss to Dallas in Game 6 of the 1999 Stanley Cup Final. Brett Hull’s Cup-clinching goal stood even though replays showed his skate in the crease.Those were the so-called glory days.The Bills and Sabres have won five playoff games combined since 2008. By comparison, the NHL’s expansion Vegas Golden Knights have already won eight in their first year of existence.Buffalo joins Nashville, Tennessee, and Charlotte, North Carolina, as the only North American markets with two or more major pro teams to not have won a title.”I think it builds character in a way. I joke with my friends that one day my kids will have to go through therapy because we are Sabres , Bills and Mets fans,” said former VH1-cable TV chief Tom Calderone, who’s from Long Island, New York, but got his broadcasting start in Buffalo and maintains a home in the city. ”It’s easy to be a Cowboys fan or a Patriots fan. But it takes true dedication to be a Bills or Sabres fan.”Calderone sees more hope reflected in signs of resurgence for the city itself.The former site of the Erie Canal has been transformed from vacant gravel lots to parkland, a water park that doubles as an ice rink in winter, and an entertainment/hockey complex built by Bills and Sabres owner Terry Pegula.Housing prices have tripled and a medical corridor is newly bustling along Main Street, where shuttered and boarded-up buildings have been renovated or replaced by new steel and glass structures.Buffalo still has its rust-belt blemishes as one of the nation’s poorest cities. Racial inequities, failing schools and a crumbling infrastructure remain issues.The Bills and Sabres aren’t immune to troubling headlines. Last week, the two teams’ president Russ Brandon resigned amid allegations of having inappropriate relationships with female employees.Buffalo might never regain the industrial-age prominence it held in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when the city became a Great Lakes shipping hub as the gateway to the Erie Canal.Nor, however, should it become the punchline comedian Jon Stewart once delivered during a stop in Buffalo, calling the city the gateway to the Ontario border town of Fort Erie just across the Niagara River – population 30,000.Watching a documentary on former Bills running back O.J. Simpson, Bakay was reminded of the gloomy times in the 1970s when the steel mills began closing and legions of people left to find jobs.”It depressed me so much ,” he said. ”Every shot of Buffalo looked like a moose that farted into the sky.”The decline led to Buffalo investing its psyche into its sports teams as a way of remaining part of the national conversation.”Our teams were the only way we could punch back and say, `Yeah, we’re here,”’ Bakay said.Allen and the prospect of adding Dahlin have recaptured his imagination as to what’s possible.”It’s like all of a sudden we’ve got go-big-or-go-home-talent coming our way,” Bakay said.He recalled how the Bills once pinned their hopes on quarterback Trent Edwards, who earned the nickname ”Captain Checkdown” for being overly cautious.”After years of the Trent Edwards of the world, we get a kid who has that kind of talent,” Bakay said.Maybe, he’ll finally be able to get off that couch.”I don’t think we need any kind of help of, `Can we believe?’ We can believe in a bag of doughnuts,” Bakay said. ”But that weekend was like, `Oh my god. Things are really happening. Pinch me.”’—This story has been corrected to note Tom Calderone is from Long Island, New York. DENVER (AP) Nathan MacKinnon was given a day off from practice, which created a little stir on social media.Turns out, nothing to fear. The Colorado Avalanche just wanted to give their top scorer and Hart Trophy candidate a little rest Monday before embarking on the postseason.Not many gave this team much of a chance to make the playoffs at the beginning of the year. Understandably so considering they were coming off a 48-point season. But here the Avalanche are, about to face the top-seeded Predators in the first round beginning Thursday in Nashville.Colorado is rested , rejuvenated and carries a surge of momentum after needing to win its final game to secure its first postseason spot since 2013-14.”We expect a lot from our group and know we can surprise a lot of people,” said captain Gabriel Landeskog, whose team finished the regular season with 95 points and matched the franchise record for wins at home with 28. ”This is when the fun begins.”The type of turnaround the team has made doesn’t happen that often in the NHL world. The last time it occurred over an 82-game season was when Pittsburgh also improved by 47 points from 2005-06 (58) to `06-07 (105).”We didn’t expect this in October, but as the season progressed our confidence grew and grew,” MacKinnon said recently after finishing with 39 goals and 58 assists to wind up fifth in scoring. ”For the last month we expected to make the playoffs. For it to actually happen is very satisfying.”The turning point for coach Jared Bednar was in early December, when his squad wrapped up a 1-4 homestand. A similar thing happened a year earlier and it sent the team into an unrecoverable downward spiral.This time, it was different. The Avs found some traction and at the end of the month began a streak of 10 straight wins.”The way (the players) handled that and responded there … starts making you a believer,” Bednar said. ”At that point, it became pretty clear we weren’t the same group and we’d push to the end of this thing.”Still, they needed a 5-2 win over St. Louis in game No. 82, a winner-take-all affair, to secure their spot. For Bednar, it was one of his team’s best performances of the season.”I want our guys to have fun, embrace it and enjoy it,” Bednar said. ”But I want us to dig in and be highly competitive.”Colorado will be without two key players for this series – defenseman Erik Johnson and goaltender Semyon Varlamov, who are both sidelined by knee injuries. Not only that , but the team has struggled this season against the Predators, going 0-3-1 and being outscored by a 17-8 margin.”It’s not going to be an easy series. But if you want to get farther, you have to beat the best team and we start with the best team,” goaltender Jonathan Bernier said.Avalanche players Colin Wilson, Gabriel Bourque and Samuel Girard all stepped up at a recent meeting and chatted about their ties with Nashville. They offered a little insight into the team they’re about to face.”They all had some good things to say about their personnel,” Bednar said. ”We have a lot of input from those guys.”The Avalanche relish in the fact that just a year ago Nashville was the second wild-card team in the Western Conference and advanced all the way to the Stanley Cup final. They wouldn’t mind following that sort of path.”It’s possible. It’s the playoffs. Anything can happen,” Landeskog said. ”It’s just a matter of taking it one day at a time, enjoying the journey and making sure you bring your best game at the best time.”Bednar was asked if he thought there might be concerns over his team being content to merely be in the playoffs.”They’re a hungry group. They want more,” Bednar said. ”I don’t mind being the underdog. It’s a good spot for our team. We’ve been feeling that way all year long, that we were an underdog to get into the playoffs. We’re here.”—
e 2013-14.”We expect a lot from our group and know we can surprise a lot of people,” said captain Gabriel Landeskog, whose team finished the regular season with 95 points and matched the franchise record for wins at home with 28. ”This is when the fun begins.”The type of turnaround the team has made doesn’t happen that often in the NHL world. The last time it occurred over an 82-game season was when Pittsburgh also improved by 47 points from 2005-06 (58) to `06-07 (105).”We didn’t expect this in October, but as the season progressed our confidence grew and grew,” MacKinnon said recently after finishing with 39 goals and 58 assists to wind up fifth in scoring. ”For the last month we expected to make the playoffs. For it to actually happen is very satisfying.”The turning point for coach Jared Bednar was in early December, when his squad wrapped up a 1-4 homestand. A similar thing happened a year earlier and it sent the team into an unrecoverable downward spiral.This time, it was different. The Avs found some traction and at the end of the month began a streak of 10 straight wins.”The way (the players) handled that and responded there … starts making you a believer,” Bednar said. ”At that point, it became pretty clear we weren’t the same group and we’d push to the end of this thing.”Still, they needed a 5-2 win over St. Louis in game No. 82, a winner-take-all affair, to secure their spot. For Bednar, it was one of his team’s best performances of the season.”I want our guys to have fun, embrace it and enjoy it,” Bednar said. ”But I want us to dig in and be highly competitive.”Colorado will be without two key players for this series – defenseman Erik Johnson and goaltender Semyon Varlamov, who are both sidelined by knee injuries. Not only that , but the team has struggled this season against the Predators, going 0-3-1 and being outscored by a 17-8 margin.”It’s not going to be an easy series. But if you want to get farther, you have to beat the best team and we start with the best team,” goaltender Jonathan Bernier said.Avalanche players Colin Wilson, Gabriel Bourque and Samuel Girard all stepped up at a recent meeting and chatted about their ties with Nashville. They offered a little insight into the team they’re about to face.”They all had some good things to say about their personnel,” Bednar said. ”We have a lot of input from those guys.”The Avalanche relish in the fact that just a year ago Nashville was the second wild-card team in the Western Conference and advanced all the way to the Stanley Cup final. They wouldn’t mind following that sort of path.”It’s possible. It’s the playoffs. Anything can happen,” Landeskog said. ”It’s just a matter of taking it one day at a time, enjoying the journey and making sure you bring your best game at the best time.”Bednar was asked if he thought there might be concerns over his team being content to merely be in the playoffs.”They’re a hungry group. They want more,” Bednar said. ”I don’t mind being the underdog. It’s a good spot for our team. We’ve been feeling that way all year long, that we were an underdog to get into the playoffs. We’re here.”—
e 2013-14.”We expect a lot from our group and know we can surprise a lot of people,” said captain Gabriel Landeskog, whose team finished the regular season with 95 points and matched the franchise record for wins at home with 28. ”This is when the fun begins.”The type of turnaround the team has made doesn’t happen that often in the NHL world. The last time it occurred over an 82-game season was when Pittsburgh also improved by 47 points from 2005-06 (58) to `06-07 (105).”We didn’t expect this in October, but as the season progressed our confidence grew and grew,” MacKinnon said recently after finishing with 39 goals and 58 assists to wind up fifth in scoring. ”For the last month we expected to make the playoffs. For it to actually happen is very satisfying.”The turning point for coach Jared Bednar was in early December, when his squad wrapped up a 1-4 homestand. A similar thing happened a year earlier and it sent the team into an unrecoverable downward spiral.This time, it was different. The Avs found some traction and at the end of the month began a streak of 10 straight wins.”The way (the players) handled that and responded there … starts making you a believer,” Bednar said. ”At that point, it became pretty clear we weren’t the same group and we’d push to the end of this thing.”Still, they needed a 5-2 win over St. Louis in game No. 82, a winner-take-all affair, to secure their spot. For Bednar, it was one of his team’s best performances of the season.”I want our guys to have fun, embrace it and enjoy it,” Bednar said. ”But I want us to dig in and be highly competitive.”Colorado will be without two key players for this series – defenseman Erik Johnson and goaltender Semyon Varlamov, who are both sidelined by knee injuries. Not only that , but the team has struggled this season against the Predators, going 0-3-1 and being outscored by a 17-8 margin.”It’s not going to be an easy series. But if you want to get farther, you have to beat the best team and we start with the best team,” goaltender Jonathan Bernier said.Avalanche players Colin Wilson, Gabriel Bourque and Samuel Girard all stepped up at a recent meeting and chatted about their ties with Nashville. They offered a little insight into the team they’re about to face.”They all had some good things to say about their personnel,” Bednar said. ”We have a lot of input from those guys.”The Avalanche relish in the fact that just a year ago Nashville was the second wild-card team in the Western Conference and advanced all the way to the Stanley Cup final. They wouldn’t mind following that sort of path.”It’s possible. It’s the playoffs. Anything can happen,” Landeskog said. ”It’s just a matter of taking it one day at a time, enjoying the journey and making sure you bring your best game at the best time.”Bednar was asked if he thought there might be concerns over his team being content to merely be in the playoffs.”They’re a hungry group. They want more,” Bednar said. ”I don’t mind being the underdog. It’s a good spot for our team. We’ve been feeling that way all year long, that we were an underdog to get into the playoffs. We’re here.”—