Aside from being in the building watching the team hoist the Stanley Cup, I don’t think a Sabres memory will ever beat Rick Jeanneret’s banner-raising ceremony for me.

One of my mom’s favorite stories to share is how I learned to read and talk alongside the early-2000s Buffalo Sabres, one story being taking the binky out of my mouth, saying “Afinagenov” or “Stuuuuuuuuu Barnes” and then carrying on with my toddler day. Some of my earliest memories are of watching the Sabres on Empire, not because of anything in particular that happened in the games, but because of the broadcast itself. The red score bug, the cutaway music, and, of course, the voice. Hearing “scores” longer than anyone can hold a note, the goal horn, and the traces of Song 2 while the replay showed. What goal? Didn’t matter. That’s the part that mattered and stuck with me at 4 years old. Rick Jeanneret gave his all to tell me what was happening, and Jim Lorentz was there to explain what had happened. When he would say “for the kids at home” before praising a player’s decision-making in the lead-up to a goal, I was that kid. It doesn’t feel more personal than that.

Because alongside asking “where’s Hasek” or Barnes or Satan or Ray or waking up many mornings from 2002-2004 to my Dad telling me the Sabres lost more times than not, and then hockey going away for an entire season in second grade, the voices were there no matter what. Playing air hockey or bubble hockey at restaurants, opening up NHL 2002 on GameBoy and NHL 1999-2001 on the original PlayStation, spending a decade of afternoons in the basement taking shots from 10 feet out on a poorly put-together Molson hockey net. Each of these was paired with the imagination of Them calling the action.

And when hockey came back, while the channel changed, it was still those two voices to welcome us back to what was about to be as formative 19 months as a now 8 to 10-year-old could have from what was nothing more than television and radio outside of 5 or so games in person a year. A first cognitive experience of playoff hockey going almost as far as it could out of nowhere. In hindsight how lucky were we that so many of those games were still locally broadcasted in the early rounds at that point?

By May 2007, there was no level of disappointment and shock that could’ve kept me from this love affair with the Sabres. Even as co-captains moved on and the team missed the playoffs in back-to-back seasons, it was “too late”. If the Sabres were playing, the effort was made to have every game on, or at least falling asleep with the clock radio at the side of my bed set to Brian Koziol replaying the highlights of the game to hear those all-important calls regardless of the result. It was second nature and etched in stone.

<Slamming Fast Forward>

By 2018 it wasn’t the same, literally because Dan Dunleavy was around to chip in along the way, and figuratively because it had been so long since the Sabres had slingshot to the top of the standings, but what I remember the most about the 10 game win streak was how even after so long, we still had it as a fanbase. I was at the game against Montreal to get to 8, the first time I had been in the arena with a full-capacity crowd since, as crazy as it feels in hindsight, one of the games the Amerks played in Buffalo during the 12-13 lockout. The feelings and investment in a single game that I hadn’t felt since the 2011 Flyers series were back like they had never left. The Scary Good we got after Jeff Skinner’s OT winner against the Sharks came at the perfect time. Even with how that season ended, we still had that moment to help us relive October 2006 in a way I don’t think any of us would have realized at the moment.

As one more moment to take us to the destination, there was something about 2000s Night during the 50th anniversary season that stuck out to me at the time. Enough has been said about the other decade nights that season that doesn’t need to be re-hashed, but 2000s night was different. I wasn’t in the building like I was for 70s Night, Aud Night, and 90s Night, so my community for that game was Sabres Twitter in peak reminiscing form. Jeremy White tweeted about the (Award-deserving) Labatt Commercial with the fish mocking Steve for being at work on a Saturday, and out of the woodwork came countless replies about the other commercials from those seasons. Brian Campbell’s excessive sweating, the Filet-O-Fish song, that playoff commercial with the different groups of people chanting Let’s Go Buffalo, Chef’s commercial with the jingle. For the number of times that I’ve watched the Better Days and Hurricane 2000 opens on YouTube since they were part of the broadcasts, there was something about seeing other people had those same sicko-level commercial memories as I struck the point home hard how there were others for whom being a Sabres fan was just different for.

The memories of the build-up are certainly still recent enough to not have to re-hash how we got there, but when RJ Night rolled around on April 1, 2022, and the building was full with 15-20 minutes to spare before the ceremony began, the thoughts hopped in the time machine as I looked on from the 300s. Back to that game in 2018 where it felt like things were beginning to turn back around. Back to watching the RJ Cam game from my freshman dorm when a rookie Jack Eichel beat the Hurricanes and all RJ and Rob Ray could do was throw their hands up in disbelief. Back to Thomas Vanek putting the Austrian Icing On The Cake as the Sabres completed their springtime run to their most recent playoff appearance. And of course, back to the living and breathing of everything Sabres related in 2006-07, when the Stanley Cup never felt closer.

Surrounded by a handful of “irl” Internet Friends who I would’ve never crossed paths with if not for This Team with a building at double the attendance of some other games that season, before Brian Duff had even introduced the man of the hour to the crowd, it all came together for me: None of this crescendo would have been possible without RJ’s voice narrating the journey for 51 seasons, fusing together the experiences of countless generations in a way that, frankly, some North American sports franchises would beg to have.

And, again, that’s before the ceremony even began.

He thanked us. We thanked him. The nostalgia of the in-arena video as the banner was revelated hit (to steal from Lorentz) like a Greyhound Bus. For 51 years the players created the moments on the ice, but the narration was why the fanbase cares the way they do for the Sabres. Through to the players stepping up to the moment and bringing him twice that month to further the point home that he was just as much a part of the team as the 23 of them with stalls in the locker room. He was the captain of an annual journey into a favorite pastime.

Rick encapsulated what differentiates Bills fandom from Sabres fandom. With the landscape of the NFL, I see being a Bills fan as a way to take part in the sports landscape of the country as a whole. The recent success of the team has been a metaphoric reminder that the city doesn’t have to be an underdog, and while it will never grow as big as those massive markets at the “top”, those across the NFL landscape that wish to join in can come from all places and share the love on fall Sundays. But Sabres fandom doesn’t have to be that. It’s just as meaningful to us, but it’s our thing that we can keep in our communal bubble that has grown naturally through the shared experiences and nostalgia that Rick Jeanneret provided.

And as the devastating news came in tonight, while it was emotional to have to accept that the journeys will have to continue without him guiding us, there is nothing I’m more certain of than how that Banner Ceremony said thank you in a way that no other possibly could have. It said see you later in a way that so many long for, and fortunately for all of us, Rick got to see firsthand the legacy that he would later be leaving behind. A fitting closing to the manual on Beautiful Noise.

(And also re-read friend of the site Taylor Fulton’s ode to RJ Night to encapsulate everything else from that night) https://www.diebytheblade.com/once-more-into-the-beautiful-noise-sabres/