Standing at a stoplight at the beginning of the long march east on a cool spring evening. For a moment, I could tell what each of my senses was picking up. Most obvious is what I see. 

The jovial faces of twenty somethings stumbling to Chippawa, their uber, or to their cheaper parking only a few blocks further. Their youth and naivety provide them a thick skin of protection from the sting of playoff defeat. The 22-year-old guy with a goathead New Era fitted on his head and an Alex Tuch 2022 Heritage Classic jersey draped drunkenly and lovingly over his buddy; clutching a Beer Sabre in a Samuelsson Home jersey and matching hat doesn’t quite know the Sabres Heartbreak. He was 2 years old when the rest of us learned the ins-and-outs of Staph infections, before a crushing Game 7 defeat after leading by a goal going into the third against Carolina. He wasn’t alive for Daris Kasperitis or pucks going through holes in the side of the net. No goal to him isn’t a rallying cry first, and an exclamation during a game second. I don’t fault him. I am envious of him. While he may have been a fan of the team during the drought, it was a drought. There were no expectations. There probably wasn’t a time he could remember them being good. He would have been 7 or so in 2011. The losses at that age hit hard, but they don’t stick as well. Maybe if he were a Bills fan, he would feel the sting a bit more, but without the Sabres being good for so long, those memories are untainted by the losses in either sport coloring the experience. For him now, this is only going up. The loss tonight will be washed away with the rest of the evening's festivities, and the party will start up again in September. 

Contrast this with the young woman walking in a Sabres tank and slug stickers on her cheeks, stuck on by the sheer force of will after an evening in the warm spring sun. Her words echo off the empty Buffalo News Building (Read: New Golisano Institute) and over the drooped heads of her fellow fans. 

Why can’t it ever be Buffalo’s time? Why is this Buffalo Sports?

The silence was palpable, so her words hung—ringing off the cement lining the streets—in the air. Thousands of people passed through them moving, silently, deliberately, all of us knowing it was a rhetorical question or too drunk to hear it. Too wrapped up in our own thoughts of Buffalo Doomerism to answer. Her friends in front of her turned back and murmured something inaudible at my distance. She is maybe a few years older than our compatriot in the Tuch jersey, so she’s been through a bit more of the heartbreak. I’d guess she’s referring to the most recent Bills playoff loss in the second round. In overtime. 

Her words sting as they pass by my ears, but I can’t help but crack a smile. My stepdad told me growing up about Buffalo heartbreak. The sports teams, the city, the people who can never catch a break. Long winters, cool summers. A once jeweled city left behind after the turn of the century and has been playing catch-up ever since. As an 8-year-old or 11-year-old, these words didn’t mean much, or maybe it was that I couldn’t fully comprehend the depth of those words. 

As I got older, those words and thoughts rattled through my mind in high school when the Sabres were bounced from the playoffs rather unceremoniously in 7 games and the Bills started the season 5-2 only to end 6-10 as the drought rolled into year 12. Were we truly doomed? Permanently cursed to live somewhere between mediocrity and outright laughing stock. As the sports teams were mired in the middle or lower. The city itself during this time saw a resurgence. Population growth, the completion of Riverworks and Canalside. Downtown saw a growth of businesses for the first time. There was a concerted effort to begin to revitalize and beautify the city. 

The City of Buffalo will always give you a reason to hope. There is always reason to hope.  Hope in the city is becoming the best version of itself. Standing for the first time in the new party in the Plaza I imagine fans of a certain age—like myself—have dreamed of the days of warm weather on the lake and meaningful hockey games in May. Sports fans live for moments like Monday night. If you couldn’t make it to the arena, be outside in shorts watching your favorite team play. The depths of despair as the Sabres went down 1-0, then 2-0. The collective exhale gave way to elation at Canalside after Samuelsson scored the first goal, and the crowd slowly began to see life in the Sabres. Like when Gene Wilder thinks he’s failed in his belief as Dr. Frankenstein, only to see the movement in his experiment and scream like a madman: 

It’s alive. It’s alive!  

It reached a crescendo when we watched Ramus Dahlin—Captain of the team—streak down the wing and score to tie it in the third. Like watching a general leading his men on a charge to try and break the defenses of the enemy. The rink seemed to shift underneath him and tilt, so he was moving downhill, and in the blink of an eye, the red light from the goalkeepers' lamp lit up, and the crowd in the arena and outside erupted. The fans around me high-fived, jumped, skipped, shadow-boxed, and hugged. I grabbed BEB and grabbed her as tight as I possibly could. After our wedding night 

There are no curses. It is our time. 

The anxiety as the game wore on began to build. The ebbs and flows and back and forth of a third period in game 7 are tight. Each time the puck stayed hemmed in the zone just a bit too long, I’d yell, "Get the puck out!" For a time, that seemed to work. Because seconds after the words would leave my mouth, the Sabres would make a sound defensive play and then move the puck out of the zone. The rational part of my brain and the irrational part of my brain are at odds in moments like this. I know objectively that there is no influence on the outcome of the game. As creatures of habit, it feels natural to pick up superstitions that—in your mind—help your team win. My hollering into the air to get the puck out was the one I held on that night. That my voice would somehow shift the winds into the favor of the Sabres. When the feelings are high, when things work, the superstitions are right. You appeased the Sports Gods, and they bless you with good fortune. 

As the Sabres circled, poked, prodded, and peppered Jakoub Dobes and hemmed in the Canadiens. You could feel the murmur come over the crowd. Our voices came together in unison for a groan as the Sabres' offensive failed to lead to the go-ahead goal. As the seconds ticked by to zeros, the crowd heaved as we all at once let out an exhale. The anxiety that built over the next 20 minutes created a charge between all of us. Our hair stood up as the electric currents buzzed at our finger tips. Hockey fans and players alike dream of a moment like this. Game 7, Overtime, next goal wins. Each of us is thinking about who will be the hero. Who will be 

The highs and lows are why we are sports fans. The roller coaster is all about the ride. The highs of Dahlin tying it in the third surrounded by 16,000 fans outside the arena are only matched by the lows of being around those same 16,000 fans as Newhook sticks a dagger into our hearts.

It's why I’m a sports fan, for better or worse. I was calling for them to tank 6 months ago. Being stressed about sports is a good thing. 

From worst to first (in the division). 

A banner to hang, a playoff series won, and memories to remember for a lifetime.

It sucks it had to end, but god damn, y’all. Look how far we came.

It’s why we’re fans.

I always said this team and Terry Pegula couldn’t break me. I would have hated watching every game for the last 10 years because the day was going to come when the Sabres would be good again. When they would break the drought and go to the playoffs. They would remind the city what it means to have winning hockey here again. Players come and go, owners can’t care less, but I was going to be right fucking here when it happened.

It's hard to have sour grapes when it ends here, and yet, for as grateful as I am, I really wish they had won. Make a save UPL. Score a goal, Alex Tuch. Add it to the pile. My city gave me my skin, and it’s my toughest leather.

If this year was the 05-06 parallel, then next season should be a ride.

The hardest part of all of this has been consoling Boomba. Lotta sports heartbreak in her lifetime. Her refrain has gone from “maybe next year” to “it’s always next year. It’s never our year." Trying to explain to her that this is an ending of one chapter and the beginning of another.