Buffalo Rising Online

Kate Peruzzini

This Independence Day marks the Seventh Annual Cobblestone Criterium Classic bike race! Each July 4th, cyclists come from all over our region, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Canada to participate. This year, they'll be competing for more than $2,000 in cash and prizes.

"In European races, there's always a cobblestone segment," said Jim Costello, owner of Handlebars Cycling Company, which sponsors the event. Seven years ago, he recognized something unique in the Cobblestone District. "We wanted to put out a bike race utilizing two of the cobblestone streets in the district," he said.

Considering the fact that most local cycling events start and finish outside city limits, it's refreshing to see some competitive bike action in our neighborhood. The course runs about a mile in length, starting and finishing by HSBC Arena on Perry Street…

Dave Staba

To be honest, I went out Wednesday night planning to chronicle the last night of this hockey season in Buffalo.

After the way Ottawa crushed the Sabres in Monday night’s third game of the Eastern Conference Finals, physically and spiritually, in perhaps the most one-sided 1-0 game ever played in any sport, the logical conclusion was that Buffalo’s seven-month run as the new glamour team of the National Hockey League was in its death throes.

Teams come back from 3-0 deficits every 30-some years (the 1942 Maple Leafs, the '75 Islanders and, in baseball, the '04 Red Sox), and no hockey team has managed it in 32. You can hope for a miracle, but expecting one is no way to do business.

The first hint that not everyone was ready to pack away their midnight blue-and-maize gear quite yet came on the train ride downtown. Of the 50 people on my car, about two-thirds wore a Sabres jer…

Dave Staba

Shows how much I know.

Last week’s preview of the Eastern Conference Finals between the Buffalo Sabres and the Ottawa Senators was rife with wisecracks about John Muckler, Ray Emery, Daniel Alfredsson and even the Roman Senate.

All wrong, as it turns out, with the possible exception of the bit about the machismo exhibited by ancient Rome’s legislative body.

I was not, however, the only one in these parts who badly underestimated Ottawa, judging from Buffalo’s performance during the first two games.

Instead of being well on their way to the five-game triumph confidently predicted here and the shot at the Stanley Cup that goes with, the Sabres go into tonight’s Game 3 in Ottawa simply trying to stay alive.

Co-captain Dan…

Dave Staba

Unlike Buffalo’s opponents during the first two rather diplomatic rounds of the National Hockey League playoffs, working up a healthy dislike for the Ottawa Senators shouldn’t be too tough.

There’s the Chris Neil hit on Chris Drury and the lengthy brawl which followed when Ottawa last visited HSBC Arena, on Feb. 22. You can relive the festivities here, including the love the Rogers Sportsnet announcers heap on Senators goalie Ray Emery, who is much better at throwing punches than stopping pucks. They also go out of their way to blame Drury for absorbing a hit that, while technically legal according to hockey’s vague rules, was clearly late and intended to take Buffalo’s co-captain out of the game. (Sorry for not identifying the commentators by name, but let’s face it – most of those Canad…

Dave Staba

One question remains from Buffalo’s six-game triumph over the New York Rangers:

On the Sabres’ final goal of the series, which provided the final margin in their 5-4 clincher, was Jochen Hecht really, really good or really, really lucky?

Try it for yourself. Stand with a hockey stick in your hands and your back to a goal, or your garage door with the borders of a goal mouth drawn on it, or better yet, your neighbor’s garage door with the borders of a goal mouth drawn on it. Then have someone throw hockey pucks at you -- preferably someone who likes you, and will aim them about waist high and slightly off to the side, rather than at the tempting target presented by your skull.

Try using that stick to redirect the flight of the puck so that it turns right at an abrupt…

Dave Staba

With the Buffalo Sabres tangled in a suitably intense playoff series against the New York Rangers, The New York Times took note in its Friday editions of the rather passionate attitude toward ice hockey here, where playoff games draw better television ratings than American Idol.

The article by Matt Higgins suggests that Buffalo may be worthy of sharing Detroit’s self-proclaimed status as “Hockeytown.” The piece focuses on the off-ice manifestations of Sabres mania in a city where the hockey team was on the endangered list as recently as 2002, thanks to the financial misadventures of the Rigas family.

Yet five years later, with a new owner and a salary cap, the Sabres’ woes seem like ancient history. According to ESPN The Magazine, the Sabres are the ultimate sports f…

Dave Staba

A simple question for the people who owned tickets for all those empty seats visible during the electrifying conclusion to Friday night’s hockey game at HSBC Arena:

What could you possibly have been thinking?

The idea of leaving anything you’ve paid good money to see before it ends has always been rather mind-boggling to me, unless you or someone you love requires immediate medical attention.

But to head for the door with the home team trailing the New York Rangers by one single swipe of a stick, particularly given the Buffalo Sabres’ season-long propensity for late rallies?

As word of Chris Drury’s shutout-ruining, game-tying goal with 7.7 seconds remaining in regulation spread through the bowels of the arena, hundreds of such fair-weather fans climbed over each other to get back to those abandoned seats.

There’s something tremendously satisfying about the thought…

Dave Staba

Rumor has it there’s a hockey game tonight at HSBC Arena.

This might be a good time for the Daniel Briere who was one of the National Hockey League’s most exciting players right up until early April to show up.

Yes, the New York Rangers have done their best to smother Briere’s skills through four games of their Eastern Conference semifinal series. But the most valuable of players, those who excel when the long slog of the regular season gives way to postseason’s sudden death, don’t need to be given space. They create it.

As much as the Sabres have embraced the team approach, Briere – who becomes a free agent moments after the Stanley Cup is carried around a rink somewhere, sometime in June -- also has to be playing for himself.

Darcy Regier and Lindy Ruff have to make some very tough decisions, like whether to keep Briere or Chris Drury, another very rich young ma…

Dave Staba

There are two requisites for a goal to occur during a hockey game.

The puck must fully cross the opposing goal line (unlike football, in which the ball only has to touch an imaginary plane extending infinitely upward from the front end of the white stripe for a touchdown to occur).

Or, as Section 78.4 of the National Hockey League rule book, “Scoring a Goal,” puts it so eloquently:

A goal shall be scored when the puck shall have been put between the goal posts by the stick of a player of the attacking side, from in front and below the crossbar, and entirely across a red line the width of the diameter of the goal posts drawn on the ice from one goal post to the other with the goal frame in its proper position.

Requirement No. 2: Someone has to see that happen.

Given the rather rigid natur…