And Now For Something Completely Different...

One of the more annoying things about writing a marginally successful blog is that I get a ton of unsolicited junk emails, most from someone asking me to link them. In addition to being off-topic - no, I do not want to link to your bowling blog - they're usually misspelled and poorly written. So it was with some trepidation that I began reading an email I received a couple of nights ago from someone I didn't know by the name of Adam Sherlip. But since the noun-verb agreement in the first few sentences was okay, I pushed on and well, I found a pretty nice email. Here's an excerpt:

As a former employee of the New York Islanders (handling digital marketing as well as amateur hockey development), I had the unique pleasure of traveling to China for youth hockey development with Angela Ruggerio - All-time leader in games played for Team USA, 3 time medalist, and all-around amazing woman - through the Islanders initiative Project Hope. Together, we worked to spread happiness and opportunities through ice hockey to kids that otherwise wouldn't have the resources, and I got to see first hand how the sport of hockey can transcend any borders and cultures, and become a language unto itself.

Adam and Angela. Click to enlarge the image and get a better look at those adorable faces.

I did some reading about Project Hope and it sounds pretty cool. It's an initiative begun by Charles Wang of the New York Islanders. The goal is to spread hockey to China while providing educational opportunities for kids and promoting cultural exchange between the East and the West. As mentioned in the above excerpt, Adam had the chance to travel to China recently and do some work with Project Hope. After returning home, Ruggerio emailed him about a village in Kashmir in India. An organization called Students' Educational and Cultural Movement of Ladakh (SECMOL) is working there and among other things has created a bio-sustainable, solar powered village in the Himalayas, organizes activities for local youth and provides services for locals in high school and college. Because of the popularity of hockey with nearby kids, they're looking for hockey volunteers. Kashmir is one of the few places in India where ice freezes but the village is mostly a rural area and hockey is an expensive sport to play even at a basic level. Having already seen how something as simple as hockey can become a tool for transcending borders and cultures, Adam is all ready to jump in and join up. The problem is that he needs to get to India as soon as possible because of the short winter there and is trying to raise funds - around $3,000 - to help pay for his travel and visa. Anything he raises in excess of that will be used to buy hockey equipment for the village and to pay for it being shipped there.

Anyone who has read my blog for even a short period of time knows that there are two things that are very near and dear to my heart: sports and kids. I spend a ridiculous amount of time blogging about hockey and my job entails working with kids who have very little chance of success in life and need a lot of help getting there. I was fortunate to grow up in an environment where I had tons of opportunities to play sports and all those cliches about kids learning life lessons through sports have become cliches because they're true. I learned a lot about myself and others through sports and when I look back over my life, some of the most wonderful people in my life have come to me through sports whether it was through playing them or blogging about them.

Adam and pals. (Click to enlarge.)

I know it's Christmas time and you've probably spent a lot of money already. But you've also probably spent a lot of it on things that will be forgotten and discarded by the time the snow melts around these parts. What's $5, $10, $20 more for something that might really make a long-term impact on the life of a child?

At the very least I would encourage you to check out Adam's website. He has lots of pictures from his previous trips, some blog entries and links to articles he's written about his experiences and why he wants to continue volunteering, an address where you can contact him for further info and a link where you can donate if you so choose.

Seriously, how cute is this picture? And how happy do those two guys look? (Click to enlarge.)

And yeah, I know he worked for the Islanders. Gross. But he went to school at UB so hey, go Bulls!

(Back to complaining about the Sabres after tonight's game, I'm sure.)

Heather and Mark Do Buffalo: Our Lady of Victory Basilica

Again, without Mark. He's been dropped to a guest-starring role due to contract issues.

(But first! I was playing No Stress Chess with one my kids on Friday and when I made a move that took his rook and blocked the move he was planning, he called me a dirty knave. A dirty knave! A seven-year-old called me a dirty knave! I think that leap-frogged him over everyone else in the class as my favorite.)

Yesterday I made my annual visit to one of my very favorite places in the Buffalo area, the Our Lady of Victory Basilica. I'll hit you with some pictures and facts in a minute but first a very quick history lesson.

The Basilica was a dream of Monsignor Nelson Henry Baker. Father Baker was born in Buffalo in 1841 (he was one of the first students at nearby Canisius College) and worked in the area in various capacities before being appointed Superintendent of what would become Our Lady of Victory Homes of Charity in Lackawanna, NY in 1882. The Homes of Charity would come to include an orphanage, an industrial school, a home for infants and unwed mothers, a maternity hospital and a protectory for young boys who were "inclined to truancy and willfulness." Even though Father Baker is no longer with us, his work with orphaned and abandoned children lives on today through Baker Victory Services which, among many other things, provides foster care, adoption programs, residential homes for troubled kids, and various counseling programs for children and families. BVS also runs a few different school programs including the one I work for so it's pretty near and dear to my heart.

At age 79, Father Baker announced that he wanted to build a church that would rival any church in the country, a tribute to the Blessed Mother who he felt had provided him with so much through the years. Father Baker hadn't set aside any money for the building but he had faith that it would be provided. And it was. When the church opened in 1926 the cost of $3.2 million - a whole lot of money back then - had been paid in full through donations from around the country.

The building I work in is right down the street from the Basilica so I drive past it at least a couple of times a day. A few years ago, I found myself really drawn there on the last day of school. I have no idea why. I'd been inside it a few times with kids but I'd never been down there by myself. The kids have always been remarkably well-behaved there but when I take them in I do spend most of my time making sure they're not climbing on altars or tipping statues - that would be bad - so I'd never really examined it closely.

Anyway, it turned out to be just what I needed on that particular day. It had been a tough year with a group of kids - the only one so far, thankfully - that I'd really struggled to like at times and never felt as attached to as my previous classes. It was also a year where I really struggled to leave work at work because the kids were in some seriously messed up situations. Over the past few years I've gotten better at realizing I can only worry about the seven hours I have the kids at school and have to let go of the things I can't control but that wasn't always easy to do. The half hour or so I spent wandering around the Basilica that afternoon was like a balm to my sad, beat-up soul. Since then I've made it a tradition to stop in on the last day of summer school and take a stroll through the church and the surrounding garden, think about the previous year (trying to focus on the good stuff), and say some prayers for all the kids I worked with that year and any other kids that come to mind, current students or past ones. It's my way of putting my kids in the hands of someone who actually can help them while also decompressing before I head off to vacation and then the new school year. I'm not Catholic so I don't get everything in the church - I don't recognize all the various saints and some of the Mary stuff seems a little intense since she's not as revered in the Protestant religion (though obviously important) - but I did grow up Christian and I don't know, I find being in a church a really peaceful, comfortable thing.

All right I'm done navel-gazing. On with the pictures! I didn't re-size any of the photos so if you want to see more detail you can click on the image to get a full-size version.

The view from the front.

And the view from the back.

When the Basilica was built, the dome was the second largest in the U.S. Only the Capitol Builiding's was larger. It's made of copper and over the years the weather has dulled it to its greenish hue which is the same weathering process the Statue of Liberty has experienced. The two spires you can see in the front were originally taller but they were damaged during a lightning storm in 1941 and shortened when rebuilt to avoid any future problems.


Father Baker once said, "There are thousands of angels in the Basilica." Estimates place the number at somewhere between 1,500 and 2,000 but no two counts have ever resulted in the same number. Father Baker's plan was to have at least one angel in every possible sight line in the church. This one was outside in the little garden off to the side.

My favorite parts of the church are the statues on top of the two colonnades in the front. They both show a group of children with an angel hovering over them. On one of them, the children are huddled around a nun which was done in tribute to the order that worked for OLV during Father Baker's tenure and still works in certain areas of OLV today. On the other statute, the children are huddled around Father Baker himself. That statue was ordered and sculpted by Father Baker's assistants and the primary architect and the first time Father Baker saw it, it has been installed on the church. He was really upset and embarrassed about being singled out from the other people who worked with him and he insisted that it be taken down. After a lot of heated debated he finally relented and it's still there today. I really like those statutes because it's a great reflection how important helping children in need was and is to OLV/BVS.


Here's the front entryway. The picture didn't completely capture it but the way the light was falling through the windows was really beautiful.


And here's your first look at the church when you enter from the main doors at the back. The lighting is pretty dark and I just had my automatic camera with me - not that it would've mattered since I've pretty much forgotten everything I ever learned about f-stops and shutter speeds - so the quality of some of the interior pictures isn't great.


The architecture includes 46 different kinds of marble and the pews are made of African mahogany.

This is my favorite corner on the inside of the church. The grotto is cut out of lava rock from Mount Vesuvius in Italy. Father Baker used it to honor the vision of the Blessed Mother to St. Bernadette at Lourdes, France. I don't really know what that means since I have no idea who St. Bernadette is and I know Lourdes as the daughter of Madonna the singer but I really, really like the way the lava rock looks. Oh, the casket at the bottom of the first picture contains the remains of Father Baker.



This is the underside of the dome. It's 80 feet in diameter and 120 feet from the floor. The theme is the Assumption and Coronation of Mary. Around the edge, the 12 apostles and three archangels are shown and another angel carries Mary to heaven. (I admit, I'd really never examined it that closely. I got all that info from the Basilica's online tour.) This is the one part of the church that every kid I've ever taken in there goes crazy about. A few years ago I had one kid who literally lay on the floor of the middle aisle and stared up at it for a good five minutes before he finally said, in awe, "HOW did they DO that?"


All right, this is getting long so let me just hit you with a few more pictures.

Oooh, preeetty.

That's the pipe organ in the back.

The Basilica is open to the public free of charge from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m every day. They also offer tours between 1 and 3 on Sundays. I've never taken one but I've heard the woman who does most of them does a wonderful job.



(Coming up next: A post about hockey! Really!)

Heather Rambles About Her Job and the Olympics - But Not At the Same Time

So this has been a tough summer. I love, love, love my new class but they are a handful to say the least. They're all very explosive - it comes hard and it comes fast - and they're all runners. I've becoming very familiar with the layout of our building and the best spots to corner someone. I think the adjustment has gone very well considering I've only been in the room for four and a half weeks but they definitely keep me on my toes.

I've taken a particular liking to one of the kids. He's probably the most challenging. He lived the first part of his nine-year-old life in a very violent, abusive situation and it shows because he blows very quickly and he gets very aggressive. Twice this summer we've had to pull the other kids out of the room while he completely trashed it - kicking over chairs, flipping desks, throwing papers and pencils around the room. When he lifted the teacher's computer monitor over his head we finally escorted him out (whether it should have gone that far first is up for debate) and let me tell you, putting your hands on a kid who's already flipping out? Not that enjoyable. He's got a good heart - as most of them do - and he's really funny but he's a tough-talking little guy who already has way more walls up than any kid should.

But today kiddo had a great day. There was a point when it became clear he was starting to escalate - the body languate, the face, the pacing - and when I asked him if he wanted to go for a walk and take a break from what he was doing, he actually agreed which is a very big deal for him. He took my hand and we took a little stroll around the building so he could have a few minutes to chill out which he did pretty quickly. Right before we went back in the room I stopped him, put an arm around him and pulled him toward me and said, "Hey, bud, I'm really proud of you for taking a break before you got too upset. That was exactly the right way to handle things," and then I gave him a soft little head-butt on the side of his head - he's tall so his head is not too much lower than mine when we're standing side-by-side. He pulled back and said, totally shocked, "Did you just kiss me?!" I said, "No, I head-butted you, you goof." And he said, "Oh, okay..." and then added, a little more softly, "But you can if you want to." These kids, I'm telling you, they break my heart in good and bad ways all at once.

And now back to your regularly scheduled sporting news...

For a few months now people have been telling me how we're really lucky that part of this hockey off-season is going to be filled by the wonder and spectacle of the Olympics. Too bad I hate the wonder and spectacle of the Olympics.

I hate the pomp and circumstance of the Opening Ceremonies. It's fifteen hours of people walking around in stupid outfits. I hate the commercialism of things like the USA's official candy bar and the USA's official fast food sponsor. Please. Most of these Olympians have probably never sniffed a Snickers bar or a bag of McDonald's fries. I hate watching people run in circles around a track that leads nowhere. I hate listening to people go on and on about the beautiful swimmers in their stupid little suits. I hate watching puberty starved little girls flip around on mats and experience the peak of their careers at 14. I hate being told to care about sports where the winner is based on the subjective opinion of a judge. If I can't watch an event and know who the winner is, I don't care. I hate teams consisting of professional athletes who couldn't give a rat's ass about playing for their country pretend like they do.* I hate softball being tossed out of the Olympics with baseball for no good reason at all. I hate weeks of endless stories everywhere about something I'm not that interested in. It's impossible for me to avoid the Olympics because they'll be all over every single channel for the next forever and a day. I hate the manufactured drama of the Olympics. I hate that the networks decide weeks ahead of time who the stories are going to be. I do love when it doesn't quite work out the way everyone planned - see Dan and Dave, 1992. I hate the blown-up pageantry when it's usually a small moment that everyone remembers later. Dan and Dave were a bust in 1992 but who doesn't remember Derek Redmond's father running out of the stands to help his injured son finish his race? That's the kind of moment you can't manufacture and I hate that the bombast threatens to overwhelm things like that. I hate "inspirational" stories about kids who have grown up on the other side of the country from their families in order to pursue an Olympic dream. I don't care. Does that make me a bad person? I still don't care.

So in conclusion, I hate the Olympics.

You know what I do love a little bit though? Badminton. But that's it.

* - I'll exclude hockey players since I think playing on the national team is still a big deal for a lot of them.

Wah, Wah, Wah (This Has Nothing to Do With Hockey)

You guys, I can't remember the last time I was so happy to see the weekend. Summer school started this week and I started in a new classroom, first and second grade. They are criminally cute - absolutely adorable, everyone of them. But they're all really explosive and they're all runners. At breakfast I chased one of them around the outside of the building, before lunch I was herding most of the kids out of the classroom while dodging the chairs the other kid was throwing and I had already physically removed every one of them from the room, after lunch I chased another kid around all three floors of the inside of the building, and the last time I escorted a kid from the room I got bit. Eight hours later I can still see little red teeth marks. And that was just today.

I really like the kids and things are going fairly well (yeah, you'll just have to trust me on that one) but I am exhausted. The last two nights I've basically come home and crashed in the bedroom, resting until bedtime. The only difference between "resting" and "sleeping" by the way is that I rest in my regular clothes and not my nightshirt. I fully intended to watch the Pirates-Yankees game tonight but I rested through most of it although I did see all the important stuff like say, the Pirates winning. Let's go Bucs! Let's go Bucs! (Lee, there's your baseball talk for this week. What's the deal with the Pirates? Their offense has looked pretty good in the games I've seen. Is their pitching that bad?)

I meant to have a couple more posts up this week. The only reason I had the skating one up was because I had it mostly written last week. I have two or three half-written that will hopefully go up this weekend after I crash for a long nap tomorrow.

So yeah. Carry on. I just wanted to complain for a few minutes before bed. Since you were kind enough to listen to me, please enjoy a few of my favorite baseball photos.

This photo would be funny anyway but the little bubble he's blowing pushes it over the top for me.

Todd Helton celebrates a trip to the World Series. That skyward look of jubilation gives me chills.

Baggy and Bidge forever!

How can you not love a guy who poses for a baseball card in a sumo wrestler costume?

Obligatory anti-Yankees photo. Jeter and Rodriguez "stretch."

Wrap-Up and Mail Bag Pt. 2

I know game diaries are a long slog and they're not everyone's cup o' tea so let me sum up my feelings about last night's game:

- This team is exasperating. They seem to know they need to play for sixty minutes - they keep saying it over and over - but they also seem to be incapable of actually doing it. Why? What's so difficult about this? It's sixty minutes. I know hockey is a tough grind but it's sixty minutes! If you break it down individually it's more like twenty minutes per night! As a fan, it's extremely frustrating to listen to players say all the right things (we need to work harder, we need to earn every point etc.) and then play like they don't really believe what they're saying.

- I covet Anton Volchenkov. I want him and I want him badly. I'm not as hard on our defense as some people are but man, watching Ottawa's defense last night was pretty mind-boggling. They do such a great job of clearing pucks and bodies out from the front of the net. Ryan Miller wasn't playing in "I'm going to steal this game" mode last night but he wasn't bad. It'd be nice if a Sabre player would pick up the occasional rebound or move the opposition out of the crease. The Sens made a shaky goalie look okay in the end. The Sabres made a good goalie look bad.

-The Sabres desperately need someone to kick ass in the dressing room. I'm not going to say the seeming lack of leadership is all because of the loss of Danny Briere and Chris Drury because if you'll recall the team played like this for huge stretches of last season, including the playoffs, but those losses do mean they don't have the talent to pull wins out of their asses in the last five minutes anymore. I love Jochen Hecht's quiet, lead by example attitude and I know Jaroslav Spacek is supposedly quite the screamer, but it's time for one of the young guys - Derek Roy, Brian Campbell, Paul Gaustad - to raise some hell. I think Ryan has grown into a good leader but one of the skaters needs to step up.

- One plus is that Thomas Vanek looked better last night. He didn't score but he was going to the net much harder than he has been lately. If he can keep that up, good things will happen eventually.

And on a totally different note, Lea, the teacher I work with stopped by yesterday with some stuff for me, including some cards from my boys who were evidently extremely upset when they discovered I'd injured myself. I missed the last two days before break and Lea said they were in a panic when I missed the second day. ("She never misses two days IN A ROW!") The cards were all adorable in that haphazard 6th grade boy way, but I'd like to share my favorite.

Here's the front:


Here's the back:

I love that all of the buffaloes have smoke coming out of their noses. A little disappointed they went with the "Let's go Sabres" chant over "Let's go Buff-a-lo!" but I'll work on that with them when I get back.

Finally, the inside of the card:


Even 12-year-old boys are capable of being sweet sometimes.

Ryan Who?

In honor of NaBloPoMO, I'll be attempting to post something every day in November. If you're not checking in every day, make sure you're catching all the posts!

(Slight explanation for this post: I'm a classroom aide at a school program for emotionally disturbed children. The classes are small - I have 6 kids right now though trust me, it often feels like 30 - and I think that makes for a more casual, hands-on relationship between the students and the staff. Just wanted to clarify that since people sometimes seem a little perplexed when I start talking about work because it's not really that much like a regular public school. Also, for the record, all the kids' names below have been changed due to confidentiality.)

Most of my students don't know the first thing about the Buffalo Sabres. Every couple of years I get one who watches hockey, but for the most part, they know very, very little. A lot of them don't have cable, they don't read the newspaper, and they don't have male figures in their day-to-day lives. (Not that mothers can't pass on a love of sports because hello! woman writing this sentence right now... but having a dad around helps, you know?) They generally know a couple of names, Ryan Miller being the primary one, but that's about it. The group I have this year is particularly unknowledgeable and not very sporty. Toward the beginning of the year one of them said to me, "Ryan Miller is my favorite! I love when he scores those goals!" (This kid is a total know-it-all who firmly believes that he's right about everything. When I pointed out that Ryan Miller is the goalie and has, as far as I know, never scored a goal, he said, "Well, he could score a goal if he wanted to, right?" When I said, "Yeah, I guess," he crossed his arms and nodded satisfactorily.)

The one thing I have noticed over the years though is that the kids quickly pick up on the fact that I love hockey and go out of their way to try and talk to me about it. It's cute really. Part of the reason most of them are in our program is because they don't know how to interact appropriately with other people so I find the whole "I don't care about this but I know you do so let's talk about it" aspect of the conversations to be very endearing. Every morning someone asks me if the Sabres won last night (even when they didn't play) and evidently they caught on to the ongoing theme for this season because when I said no, they'd ask, "Well, did they atleast play well?" They'll ask who scored, who we played, all that stuff, and they do occasionally seem to really soak up some information.

Last year there was a long stretch of the season where Tim Connolly seemed to cease to exist. He re-signed with the team before the season started and then fell off the face of the earth. I was secretly convinced that he was dead and the team just hadn't revealed it yet. So when I picked up the newspaper one day and saw a little picture of Tim at the top of the front page, I squealed. Alan, whose desk was right beside mine, asked what was going on so I explained how Timmy had been hurt during the playoffs pretty seriously, and how he'd missed so much time, and how I hadn't seen or heard him in months, and how he was one of my favorites so I was just really excited to see him in a hockey uniform and hear him finally talking about coming back. Alan nodded in slight interest and turned back to what he was doing. But at the end of the day he gave me this:


Seriously, how cute is that? (Margee, I apologize. I didn't think Alan would get the whole "Margee has dibs on Timmy" thing.)

Anyway, the one thing they never really seem to get is Henrik Tallinder. They'll ask me over and over and over who my favorite player is but they can't remember him. I don't know if they're just asking the question to ask it and not really listening to the answer or if it's not a name they hear much otherwise or if they have a hard time with it not being an American sounding name or what. So you can imagine my surprise and delight when Jake, who I've had for two years now, leaned over my shoulder the other day, pointed at a picture on my desk and said, "Hey, it's Henrik Tallinder!" No hesitation, no question, and perfect pronunciation which is more than some professionals can pull off.

"How'd you know that?"
"He's number 10, right?"
"Yeah, but how'd you know that?"
:::massive eye-rolling::: "Geez, Heather, you only talk about him ALL THE TIME."
"Do you know any other Sabres?"
"... Nah."

So there you go. I have helped create the only 12-year-old boy in the city of Buffalo who can pick Henrik Tallinder out of a line-up and not say, Ryan Miller. My work with Jake is clearly complete.

(I promise some "real" hockey content tomorrow. I spent all my non-working time in bed today due to a killer cold and I'm trying desperately not to get sick for my upcoming long weekend.)

Why I Love Hockey - Part 10

Why I Love Hockey #10 - Street Hockey
When I first moved to Buffalo I was fascinated by the number of kids who played hockey in the street and in their driveways. I know that sounds ridiculous to people who grew up in hockey areas but I didn't hold a hockey stick in my hands until I was 19-years-old and I was a pretty athletic, sports-obssessed kid. It's safe to say that when I was a child, kids in Alabama did not play hockey. I would sit out in the yard of the apartment we were renting at the time with a book and just watch for hours. I loved it. I loved that a whole group of kids would congregate every day and play a game and if for some reason the whole gang couldn't come, a couple of kids would just shoot around. I loved that they all had jerseys or t-shirts of their favorite players and I loved that they were all Sabres players. I loved that if they were short-handed they'd prop a couple of planks up in one of the goals. I loved the way they would, with a total lack of embarrassment or self-conciousness, call their own highlights, pretending to be playing with the pros. I loved hearing their little tiny voices doing their best Rick Jeanneret impressions - "He shoots, he scooooooooooooores, top shelf where mama hides the cookies!"

My husband has a big family - six siblings and fifteen nieces and nephews - and where one or more Bermingham is gathered, a hockey game is likely to break-out. I love watching him and his brothers playing around like they're 10 again (and moaning and groaning while limping and holding their backs a few hours later). I love watching my nephew, in the throes of a goalie phase, waddling out to net with full padding and a baseball glove. I love watching the kids laugh and celebrate with each other when they make one of the dads look like a fool with a deke or a great steal. I love watching the grown-ups pretend to be put out while patting the kid on the head as he runs by, little smiles and lots of pride on their faces

And I love playing. I go to gym with my class every day and the hockey unit is by far my favorite. Ed, the gym teacher, Kevin, the aide for the class who takes gym with us, and I all run around like we're one of the kids and I think we have as much fun - if not more - than them. We hack away at each others ankles, taunt each other good-naturedly, turn the kids against the other adults ("Okay, guys, under no circumstances does Heather score!"), and compare ourselves to our favorite Sabres and do our best impressions of Rick and Jim ("Dylan Francis robs him blind!"). You've should've seen me the day I shot from pratically beside the net and lifted the puck over the goalie's shoulder and into the top corner of the net. I ran around that gym screaming and yelling in a celebration that would've made Maxim Afinogenov proud while Kevin and Ed rolled their eyes and shook their heads and the kids giggled and high-fived me.

I think I love it because I know, in my heart, THAT'S hockey. It's not salary caps and free agents and players moving on to new teams and bigger contracts every three years. It's not fans calling sports radio and griping about what management has or hasn't done. It's not newspaper story after newspaper story about a deal that went bad and who's to blame for it going that way. It's not even really about finishing at the top of the conference and lifting the Cup at the end because let's face it, only one team gets to do that. Hockey is Max Afinogenov belly-flopping on the ice because he can't think of any other way to celebrate scoring the biggest goal of his life. It's the guys on the bench dropping their jaws and hooting and hollering at the amazing move Tim Connolly just pulled off. It's teammates passing puck after puck to Jochen Hecht because they want so badly for him to get that 20th goal. It's that little tiny smile sneaking across Ryan Miller's face after he just shut down the opponent during a shoot-out even though you know he doesn't want to look too excited. It's Derek Roy, Brian Campbell, and Paul Gaustad hanging around after practice and playing one-on-one keep away, shoving each other and giggling, just like my kids in gym class. I love that stuff. I love it so much.

The Sabres put together a little video to play before every playoff game this season. I don't have any idea if people outside of Buffalo find it touching at all, but I find myself choking up at the same point every time. It starts with the kids running around playing hockey and it culminates with the cut from the row of kids in their little helmets to the Sabres getting ready for a game. I think it gets me because the pros are the most fun to watch when they're still that little boy that ran around in the street or skated around the rink. In those moments, hockey is practically perfect.

There's Always Next Year

Buffalo fans seem to be split into two camps right now. The first camp feels like the loss in the Eastern Conference Finals ruins the entire season. What's the point in playing so well all season if you're just going to choke when it counts? The second camp feels like, regardless of what happened in the playoffs, it was a great season, one that fans in Buffalo will remember for a very long time. I've bounced back and forth a little bit, but I've landed somewhere in the middle.

I'm definitely disappointed. I'm not disappointed so much in the fact that the Sabres lost - only one team out of 30 can win the Stanley Cup, the NHL playoffs are definitely the most grueling playoffs in pro sports, and we lost to a very talented, very motivated Ottawa team. I am disappointed that after having such a good season - a season full of heart and drive - the team looked so out of sync. I won't go as far as saying they didn't want to win because I doubt that's the case. The players certainly looked and sounded sad and disappointed about the way the season ended. But most nights, through all three rounds they played, they certainly didn't look like they wanted to win and they didn't appear to be concerned or angry about their play. By the time they snapped out of it, they were in a 3-0 hole to a very good team and there was no room for error. Maybe a Sabres team firing on all cylinders still loses the series to the Senators. I'm certainly not going to take anything away from the Sens. They're loaded with talented, they played like they wanted to win, they had each others backs on the ice. They were nothing short of fantastic. But even as crappy as we played (seriously, has there ever been a game more painful than game 3 of that series?) 3 of the 4 losses were one goal games and the first game wasn't as uneven as the final score suggests. If our powerplay is average (as opposed to unbearably craptacular), it's potentially a different series. Last year, when the Sabres lost to the Hurricanes, there was no doubt in anyone's mind that they left absolutely everything they had in them on the ice. This season, while the last couple of games were very good, most fans were left wondering where their team had disappeared to.

But it was a great season and not just on the ice. As Kevin has already said very well over on Bfloblog.com, no real Sabres fan can honestly say he came away from this season empty-handed. It's been said over and over, and I really don't know how to say it in a way that will make people outside of Buffalo understand or appreciate it, but the Sabres have become such a huge community thing over the past couple of seasons that it's mind-boggling. You could walk through any part of town and feel a buzz in the air on game days. Everyone walked a little lighter after a victory, everyone was a touch subdued after a loss. During the playoffs, thousands of people stood outside the arena and watched the game on a big screen TV because they wanted to be a part of things, they wanted to feel the incredible energy and community. For crying out loud, 10,000 people sat in HSBC Arena to watch a game that was going on in Ottawa! Ten thousand! The Sabres were the hot topic of conversation. I'm amazed at all the people I had hockey talk with over the course of the season - fellow passengers on the bus, the anti-social bus driver (the only time we ever spoke to each other), cashiers in stores, customers at the second job, and most amazingly to me, my students.

I've worked with 6th graders for 5 years now, and I've never, ever talked hockey with any of them. It just wasn't on their radar. We'd talk about football and basketball some (as much as I could since I'm a casual fan of football at best and not the slightest bit interested in basketball). We'd occasioanlly even get baseball in there though most of them were barely interested. Never talked about hockey though, not until this year. The interest was helped along by the previously mentioned Dylan, an awesome little hockey player himself and a real fan of the game. The two of us would sit down at breakfast every morning and talk about the previous night's game, upcoming opponents and amazing (or amazingly terrible) plays and eventually the other kids started to get sucked in. (If you're wondering why I eat with the kids every morning and why it sounds like there are so few of them it's because I work at a program for emotionally disturbed kids - highly supervised, very good staff to student ratio.) Most of them didn't turn into experts but they all knew whether the Sabres had won or lost, they'd all seen highlights on the news (some of them don't have cable so watching the games were out), and they all had favorite players - Danny Briere is very big with the sixth grade crowd - enter joke here about how it's because he looks like he could fit right in with them. The Sabres were a great talking point and a real bonding ritual with a bunch of kids that have been through hell in their short lives and are often reluctant to give any adult around them any part of themselves and boy, this is starting to sound extremely cheesy, but I'll always be grateful for that. And you know what's even better? The Monday morning after the team was eliminated the kids still wanted to talk about the Sabres at breakfast. What was it like to be at the game? Is Danny going to stay? Were there a lot of people outside? Is Danny going to stay? Did you cry when they lost? Ryan Miller is the best goalie in the world and I can't believe that loser Emery gets to play in the Finals! (They might've had some... uh, adult influence on that one...) Do you think we're still going to be really good next season? And hey, Heather, IS DANNY GOING TO STAY?!

So while I'm sure there are plenty of bandwagon fans who have spent the past week ripping the flags off their cars, tossing out their player posters, and listing their commemorative medallions on ebay, I know this current Sabres team has grown a lot of new fans who will stick with the team and the sport and that can only be a good thing, you know?

I told my kids during the first round that if the Sabres won the Stanley Cup, I was going to get a tattoo in celebration. A few days after the team's elimination, one of them asked me if I was still going to go through with the tattoo. "I don't know," I said, "the deal was they had to win it all which they didn't do." He thought about that for a long second and finally said, "I think you should get it anyway." "Yeah?" "Yeah. I mean, it's not like you don't still love the team, right?"

Right. Out of the mouth of babes and all.

Go Sabres!