Mike Harrington: Home not a kind place for Sabres

Mike Harrington: Home not a kind place for Sabres

Greetings from Key Bank Center Mike Harrington here for the Buffalo News the Savers in the Anaheim Ducks on Monday and certainly there’s an undercurrent of tension in this building the fans aren’t happy the players aren’t happy no one can really be happy where the Savers are

In the standings but as we talked about in Sunday’s inside the NHL column the players reacting a little bit differently here to the paying customers descent it goes back to that terrible 9 to4 loss to the Columbus Blue Jackets on December 19th the players were upset with the fans chanting against coach Don

Granado and decided not to do their postgame salute now this is something frankly many of you told me about I had not noticed this and I had to wait until they won a game to really see it uh we saw that against the Los Angeles Kings

The other night the 7 nothing win the players were starting to leave the ice but they had a second thought about it now you could say this is much a do about nothing and I get that you could also say it’s something that really shouldn’t go on players should not

Really get involved with fans fans here little jumpy at times can you blame them 13 straight years is what we’re looking at out of the playoffs and the bigger thing really a lot of these fans understand all these players aren’t here for 13 years Kevin Adams and Don

Granard aren’t here for 13 years really what’s I think egging the fans on is the home record the last two years this team is 27th in the NHL in home winning percentage the last two years it’s not good enough and we see so many good performances on the road like Saturday’s

3-2 win in Minnesota and I get emails from you guys all the time I bought my tickets and they’ve lost seven games in a row at home and it’s true you’ve seen some terrible performances here and I think what happened is this team reacted to it um we’ll see what happens going

Forward here the biggest thing for the Savers the rest of the season start playing better at home start winning games here the paying customers really aren’t asking a lot in that regard just play the kind of game you play in Madison Square Garden in Vegas Saturday

In Minnesota in Toronto we have not seen enough performances like that from this team this year the rest of the year trying to get this team to play better at home should be a big priority we’ll have to see going forward how the paying customers react are you in the building

At all at this point for this club I don’t really know where it’s going next year but a lot of you have contacted me and said I’m done again we thought you were back this year this team just hasn’t played well enough we’ll see how the support continues the rest of the

Year just a few thoughts as you look back on that column inside the NHL every Sunday in the Buffalo news also check out the NHL power rankings and all the coverage from myself Mike Harrington and Lance lowski

Columnist Mike Harrington discusses the Sabres’ troubles at home and the players’ decision not to salute the fans after wins that was documented in his Inside the NHL column.