MATT VOLZ
Sports Editor
During our Super Bowl trip to Las Vegas, I had the opportunity to attend my first NHL game outside of Buffalo.
We went to the Vegas Golden Knights game against the Minnesota Wild on Monday, Feb. 12.
Predictably, the Vegas hockey experience is quite a bit different than Buffalo.
Before each game, a knight skates out onto the ice to engage in “battle” with an unknown foe.
Sometimes, celebrities will make appearances at the games, similar to the New York Knicks or Los Angeles Lakers of the NBA.
For example, Grammy award-winning rapper Lil Jon was at our game.
But beyond all the pomp and circumstance that is to be expected with a Vegas attraction, I couldn’t help but notice how, compared to the KeyBank Center in Buffalo, the T-Mobile Arena in Vegas was just… better.
Now, there’s several reasons as to why that may be. A big part of it is age.
The KeyBank Center is nearly 28-years-old, having opened in September 1996 when the Sabres left their former home, the Buffalo Memorial Auditorium.
The most recent major update to the arena took place in 2016, when KeyBank secured the naming rights and the arena was renamed from First Niagara Center to what it is today.
But the only things added in the 2016 update were the KeyBank Center signage and a new LED lighting system.
The T-Mobile Arena also opened in 2016, one year before the Golden Knights began play as an expansion team in the NHL.
It should also come as no surprise that Las Vegas as a city is a bigger draw than Buffalo, especially in the winter months of the NHL season.
Maybe the biggest factor that affects the mood of the arena is on-ice performance, however.
The Golden Knights have been one of the most successful expansion teams to date, having only missed the playoffs once in their team’s existence.
They have also been to the Stanley Cup Finals twice in that span, and they won it all last year.
This season, Vegas is once again a dominant force in the league, sitting in second place in the Pacific Division at the time of this article.
Buffalo, on the other hand, hasn’t made the playoffs at all since 2011, the longest postseason drought in NHL history and the second-longest drought in all of North American professional sports, trailing only the New York Jets.
The Sabres also haven’t won a playoff series since 2007, they haven’t reached the Stanley Cup Finals since 1999 and they’ve never won the Stanley Cup.
Not to mention, between 2013 and 2021, the Sabres finished in last place in the entire NHL four times.
After a 2022-2023 campaign in which they missed the playoffs by a single point, the Sabres currently sit at 23-26-4, 10 points out of a playoff spot and seventh-to-last in the whole league.
They are also on pace to have a losing record at home for the fourth consecutive season.
As the team continues to struggle and the playoff drought grows longer, fan support is not what it used to be.
In fact, fans have loudly expressed their discontent with the way the organization has been run in recent years.
Four years ago, Buffalo native Duane Steinel called into the sports talk show “Schopp and the Bulldog” on WGR 550, Buffalo’s flagship sports radio station, following a loss to the Ottawa Senators.
Steinel proceeded to go on a nearly four-minute rant about how the organization’s many missteps have brought him, a dedicated fan and season ticket holder, to the brink of giving up hope.
“I’ve dedicated my life to hockey because of this team,” he said in the call. “I can’t do it anymore, man.”
A few weeks later, some Sabres fans staged a protest outside the KeyBank Center to voice their displeasure with the organization.
Fans have also stopped showing up to games in Buffalo.
An article published by The Athletic in December 2023 showed the attendance figures for each team in the league to that point in the season.
The Sabres ranked 31st out of 32 teams, ahead of only the San Jose Sharks who had one of the worst starts to a season in recent memory.
Vegas, on the other hand, had the league’s very best attendance record, with their arena bringing in nearly 700 more people than its listed capacity on a given night.
Monday’s game was no different, with a crowd of 18,207.
As I sat and watched the game, I thought to myself, how can the Sabres be more like the Golden Knights?
How can the KeyBank Center be a rocking atmosphere like T-Mobile Arena is on any given night?
I do have to give the Sabres credit for trying to make their pregame introductions more entertaining.
When Buffalo skates onto the ice to begin the game, they skate underneath a massive pair of sabre swords as longtime broadcaster Rick Jeanneret’s famous call of “here come the Buffalo Sabres” blasts through the loudspeakers.
However, I think more can be done with this.
In decades past, the team used to have its mascot, Sabretooth, tightrope down from the ceiling of the arena onto the ice.
I also think the arena needs some major upgrades. Some fans have noted issues such as arm rests being replaced by 2×4’s, outdated seats and signage that remains from the team’s navy blue color scheme, which they left for royal blue in 2020.
Arena upgrades in the near future seem unlikely at this point, however. The KeyBank Center is owned by Erie County, so any plans to upgrade the facility would need to go through the county first.
According to an article published by Sports Business Journal in 2022, the county doesn’t seem all that interested in putting government funding towards the arena for upgrades.
A spokesperson for Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz stated that under the arena’s current lease, it is up to the owner to foot the bill.
So, will the Sabres gameday experience ever be comparable to that of the Golden Knights?
Only time will tell.
But, as the arena continues to decay much like the play on the ice, fan support isn’t getting any stronger and Buffalo is becoming less and less of a premier hockey destination.