I got a pair of emails over yesterday's post about the rampage conducted by some visiting Sabres fans in Columbus last week. First, here's our old buddy Josh Crockett -- check out his own photo gallery from last night's Caps-'Canes game -- talking about what the Buffalo fans were like during last year's Eastern Conference Finals:
Sabres fans set all kinds of local records for mayhem at the RBC Center last year -- something like 10 arrests during Games 1 and 2 of the ECF, after there'd never been more than a handful in the nine-year Carolina tenure of the franchise before that series. Maybe it's the bandwagoners, but the past couple of years they've been awful.
Now here's an email from Michael Turner from Army Of The Ohio:
[W]hat GV Media said in his blog is just about dead on. These Sabres fans who made the trip, for the most part, were beyond reproach. Not only that, but when I spoke with my retail manager at Nationwide the following day when I went to work the Minnesota Wild game here, I heard more stories about how cars were found with smashed windows around the Arena District and the arena parking lot, how beer bottles and cans and remnants of six-packs were strewn around the rear end of the Arena. Yeah, the Arena District is a night life type of place, but a lot of the post-game issues were not of the normal variety.Definitely not a good time. Atmosphere during the periods? Playoffs. Between periods and at the end? Soccer hooligans hopped up on speed.
When Buffalo visited Washington earlier this season, the arena was absolutely revved up by the presence of the Sabres fans. But I was inside the arena all game long and didn't leave until well after the game was over. Did I miss anything while I was inside?
