Fans of the Buffalo Sabres have long awaited this moment. For over a decade—through multiple tanks, rebuilds, and disappointments, through that one COVID season when they were one of just six teams that didn’t make the expanded playoffs—they have waited for something they can believe in. Something they can look up to. Something that makes them feel like everything will be OK. Something that warms the icy temperatures of Western New York and returns this beloved, once-hallowed franchise to its proper glory.
The problems of the past are solved. Our savior has arrived.
Ladies and gentlemen, the Buffalo Sabres got a new jumbotron. It’s 27 feet tall and 43 feet wide—i.e., four Tage Thompsons tall and six Tage Thompsons wide—and twice as big as the old screen that used to hang in our den of joy, the KeyBank Center. Panels wrap around the entire sucker, like if you taped four of those curved TVs that Samsung tried to make happen in 2014 together. The screens’ pixels, which were separated by 10 millimeters on the old jumbotron, are now separated by 4 millimeters. That’s a 6-millimeter difference.
This is what people have been asking for. It is, in fact, the only thing people have been asking for.
“From an ownership perspective, I have put a great deal of thought and research into the fan experience over the last year,” fearless leader and Sabres owner Terry Pegula said in his triumphant announcement of the videoboard back in February. “We are thrilled about the many projects we have in the pipeline, none bigger than a new videoboard that will be ready for the 2024-25 season.”
A few weeks ago, the Buffalo Sabres published a video about their new jumbotron titled “This Is How We Win,” and folks, it is impossible to disagree with such logic. Good hockey players do not win Stanley Cups. Gigantic screens with astounding clarity do. When incoming players like Beck Malenstyn, Nicolas Aube-Kubel, and Jason Zucker look up at this beaming light, they will not see the part that says “Sabres 0, Away Team 3”; they will simply behold its striking beauty and think, By God, those pixels are barely separated. They will be inspired to skate faster. To, you know, score actual, real goals. To propel the Buffalo Sabres to their best start in franchise history.
And should that somehow not happen—should the decision to invest more in a big scoreboard (oh, and a new roof, too!) than in the roster result in another losing season that both embarrasses and dismays the region’s loyal fans—well, heartbreak will look good on a jumbotron like this.
We’re all fine. The Buffalo Bills are also fine. And Sean McDermott is good in end-of-game situations. Everybody eats.
