FanHouse Rick Jeanneret

As Adam Gretz mentioned, Wednesday's Buffalo-Florida game featured a melee at the end. After Maxim Afinogenov capped a four-goal third for the Sabres with an empty-netter, Panther Nathan Horton took exception. Perhaps Horton thought Afingenov should have done the Penguin thing and missed the net. The ensuing scuffle broke out into a full-fledged fight between Craig Rivet of the Sabres and Florida's Keith Ballard. Here's a better look at all that transpired, featuring the awesomeness of Rick Jeanneret.

In his years of broadcasting, I'm sure Rick Jeanneret has gotten a few goal calls wrong. After all, when you put the kind of energy into a game that he does, you're bound to get a little excited for the big goals. When there's a mass of bodies between the shooter and the net, it's often impossible to tell if someone tipped the puck on the way by or not. Friday night, Jeanneret got one wrong. The Sabres scored with four seconds to play to tie the score against San Jose, before going on to win the game in a shootout. Everyone, Jeanneret included, went crazy, and no one cares that Jeanneret credited Jason Pominville's goal to Craig Rivet. This was a fantastic game, one of the more entertaining of the season, and listening to a legend like Jeanneret call it only make it more enjoyable. As he said while the replays showed Pominville tipping the puck, "I don't think anybody in the building cares who scored it".

Stanley Cup mania has reached such a fever pitch in Buffalo that everyone associated with the team is afforded celebrity status. Long-time Radio and TV announcer Rick Jeanneret is one of those people. Known mostly to Sabres faithful as "R.J." he's also been called "Rodney" for his resemblance to the late comic. His calls are legendary amongst Sabres fans, and for this fan he's probably one of the reasons why I wound up gravitating to the Sabres when I returned to hockey as a fan in 1997. He makes no bones about his love of the Sabres, and while that is off-putting (to say the least) for out-of-town fans, he is one of the game's true characters and great storytellers. When he finally retires he will be missed in a nigh-inappropriate way by many people.

The Sabres, trying (and succeeding apparently) to cash in on their fans' passion for them, just announced the latest in RJ-related merchandise (the profits from which all go to charity), RJ Collectibles, replete with phrases from some of his most memorable moments in broadcasting. Ken (J.P.'s newest partner at Japers' Rink) in discussing this story unearthed a horrible photo of RJ circa the Days of Disco, Blacksploitation Flicks and Stagflation (an economic event so terrible that I'm not shocked it had the effect on fashion that it did). This past Christmas the Sabres distributed a 45 minute documentary on RJ on DVD which sold over 30,000 copies at $10 apiece.