Let's Try This Again, Shall We?

That'll show me for getting excited about watching hockey. Instead of getting in to Buffalo at 6:55 on Thursday, just in time to catch up to the game on DVR, I got in at midnight after being stranded in Chicago for 5 hours. I suppose I should have known better; the trip between Saint Paul and Buffalo has always been cursed.

As it was, I did get to see the game on a big screen, in its entirety, and in HD (thanks to my parents finally abandoning their TiFaux for a real DVR), just like I wanted, but it just wasn't the same. Call me crazy, but I think it's kind of anti-climactic to watch a game that's already ended, even if I don't know how it ends. It's markedly unsatisfying to yell at Miller to get the hell back in his net when I know that, even if he could hear me, he can't go back in time and obey me. It didn't keep me from yelling, anyway, but still. Moreover, I didn't get to watch the game with my family, which is what I'd been most looking forward to. In my humble opinion, watching hockey with the Gamblers is the absolute funnest way to watch hockey ever. My brother was sweet enough (or just lazy enough, I'm not sure) to watch the game again so I didn't have to be yelling at the screen all by myself. It was a refreshing change of pace.

All things considered, I'm glad I watched and didn't just take the easy way out of checking the score. It was a fun game that avoided being a repeat of one of the most maddening types of games from last season, where the Sabres dominated but still lost. It's way too soon to start declaring bad habits broken, but it was encouraging to see the Sabres neither scramble nor deflate after being scored on early in the third period. I don't know about anybody else, but I've been conditioned to react to this team getting a lot of chances and not scoring with panic, but somehow this game was different. Maybe it's just because my brother had told me it was a game worth watching, but I had faith in them coming back. And maybe I'm just projecting, but it seemed like the Sabres, for the first time in what seems like a long time, had faith in themselves, too. Instead of panicking or giving up, they just kept playing the way they had been playing, trusting in the fact that chances would turn to goals. And, lo and behold, they did. And once again, I find myself excited to see what the next game holds.

So maybe tonight I'll get the real season opener that I've been waiting for.