BUFFALO, N.Y. -- For anyone who hasn't been to Buffalo in a few years, it hits you like a sledge hammer.
The area around downtown First Niagara Center looks like a whole different place, the HaborCenter complex and new hotels revitalizing a once-depressed neighborhood.
If there were NHL titles handed out for off-ice success, the Buffalo Sabres would finally be champions.
But the on-ice product has a long way to go to catch up to the business side.
"Well, hopefully the one follows the other," Sabres forward Cody Hodgson told ESPN.com last week. "The Pegulas have done a great job really revitalizing the downtown here, and making it exciting. A lot has changed around the arena and the city to make it a fun place to come and play. Hopefully, we can build on that and transfer that to on-ice success."
Sabres owners Terry and Kim Pegula are the toast of this city, saving the NFL's Buffalo Bills and paying out of pocket some $200 million to build the HarborCenter complex, a sparkling two-ice-sheet facility that includes a sports bar, restaurant and Tim Hortons coffee shop.
It is in that very Tim Hortons that ESPN.com sat down last week with Sabres president Ted Black, Pegula's right-hand man, with hockey pictures of former Sabres star Tim Horton adorning the walls and giving this coffee house more of a Sabres Hall of Fame feel than anything else.
"It's extremely unique," Black says of the HarborCenter complex. "When we came here, Terry knew that he wanted to make a difference outside of hockey, but just didn't know yet in what form. Where we sit now used to be a parking lot owned by the city."
About three and a half years ago, they were approached by people who wanted to build a parking garage in this spot.
"We had been to Kettler [the Washington Capitals' practice facility] and we said almost in jest, 'Hey, do you know you can put an ice rink on top of a garage? They did it in Washington,'" Black recalled.
Black brought a group to Washington to tour the Kettler facility. That spurned the vision for HaborCenter, which became a more grandiose edifice.
ou can't help but feel the excitement that exudes from Black as he points to the surrounding area. But then your mind drifts back to the hockey team.
The Buffalo Sabres sit dead last in the NHL with a 14-30-3 record, entering the All-Star break having lost 11 games in a row, a franchise record.
"It is difficult," admitted Black, crossing his arms. "In some ways, I'm either blessed or cursed that I worked for the Penguins from 1999 to 2008. I constantly remind people that it didn't happen overnight there, either. The Penguins went five straight years picking in the top five in the draft."
When Pegula bought the team, in February 2011, he flashed his deep pockets and made Sabres fans giddy with the kind of payroll money never before seen in these parts. But overspending on free agents -- think Ville Leino and Christian Ehrhoff -- backfired under former general manager Darcy Regier. The team never meshed and missed the playoffs in 2011-12 in what began a gradual decline to the bottom of the standings. Regier and longtime coach Lindy Ruff were fired along the way and core veterans, such as Jason Pominville and Ryan Miller, were sold off.
Originally Posted by mysticsoto
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