Walking through the Sabres Store inside KeyBank Center Thursday afternoon, Ray Lafferty was a man on a mission.<\/p>\n
Lafferty came to the store specifically to buy a white Sabres’ hockey jersey.<\/p>\n
Mission accomplished.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Why make the trek from Cheektowaga to KeyBank Center.<\/p>\n
“It shows I’m all in,” Lafferty said. “I’ve been a Sabres fan since 1970.”<\/p>\n
Tonawanda’s Mike Shultz came to the store specifically to buy a Just Dishin’ Sabres hat.<\/p>\n
And, he may buy some other things too.<\/p>\n
“”I’m just so excited,” Schultz said.<\/p>\n
Schultz and Lafferty are just a small sample size of how Sabres fever has gripped Western New York with the sale of anything related to the team a hot retailing item.<\/p>\n
The excitement is being fueled by the Sabres’ return to the NHL Stanley Cup playoffs for the first time since 2011, ending an NHL-record 14-year playoff drought.<\/p>\n
Consider in early December, the Sabres were in last place not only in the Atlantic Division but the NHL’s East Conference.<\/p>\n
The team finished with 50 wins and winning the Atlantic Division crown. Only the Carolina Hurricanes had more points and wins in the Eastern Conference than the Sabres.<\/p>\n
“This sets us up well for future seasons,” said Pete Guelli, Sabres; chief operating officer.<\/p>\n
Game day merchandise sales at the Sabres Stone is up 43% for last season.<\/p>\n
Attendance is up 12% and the team recorded 24 regular season home games at KeyBank Center, up from just four last season.<\/p>\n
Guelli said the Sabres are ready for the playoffs including, working its Delaware North partners, to create a series of new foods that will be available beginning with Sunday’s contest against the Boston Bruins.<\/p>\n
“We really spread our wings,” said Mike Buonopane, Delaware North executive chef.<\/p>\n
Buonopane and his team created 18 new playoff food items,<\/p>\n
Among the new items:<\/p>\n
* The Tommer Bomber, a meatball sandwich with mozzarella cheese, potato chips on garlic bread and served in a replica Sabres’ wagon box.<\/p>\n
The meatballs are from Buonopane’s grandmother’s recipe.<\/p>\n
* Sponge candy fried dough<\/p>\n
* Pulled pork egg roll<\/p>\n
* General Tso’s chicken sandwich<\/p>\n
* Cinnamon sugar pretzel bites.<\/p>\n
“I think the fans will respond to the items,” Buonopane said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Walking through the Sabres Store inside KeyBank Center Thursday afternoon, Ray Lafferty was a man on a mission.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":554196,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5100],"tags":[1107,229,5133,5,4,1108],"class_list":{"0":"post-554195","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-buffalo-sabres","8":"tag-buffalo","9":"tag-buffalo-sabres","10":"tag-buffalosabres","11":"tag-hockey","12":"tag-nhl","13":"tag-sabres"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116417243609213429","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=554195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554195\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/554196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=554195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=554195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=554195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}