Buffalo New York (a.k.a Let's Go Sabres!)

I had the luck of being in Buffalo, NY on the evening that the Buffalo Sabres were playing the Ottawa Senators in the fifth game of the NHL Eastern Conference Quarterfinals. I know nothing about hockey -- except that it's not good to cheer the Sabres in Philadelphia -- but I wanted to catch some of the Buffalo spirit.

I could think of no better place to watch the game than the birthplace of the Buffalo Wing, Frank & Teresa's Anchor Bar. The wing has a simple origin:

Buffalo, NY (1964)-On a Friday night, Dominic Bellissimo was tending bar at the now infamous Anchor Bar Restaurant in Buffalo, NY. Late that evening a group of Dominic's friends arrived at the bar touting a ravenous appetite. Dominic asked his mother, Teressa to prepare something for his friends to eat.

At about midnight, Teressa brought out two plates she had prepared in the kitchen and placed them on the bar. The aroma from the plates captured the attention of Dom and his friends and everyone asked, "What are these?" they looked like chicken wings, a part of the chicken that usually went into the stock pot for soup.

Teressa had deep fried the wings and flavored them with a secret sauce. The wings were an instant hit and it didn't take long for people to flock to the bar to experience this new eating sensation. From that point on, Buffalo Wings became a regular part of the menu at the Anchor Bar.

Since then, lots of famous people have eaten there...like Mike Mularkey, the recently replaced head coach of the Buffalo Bills. They've got to get Dick Jauron in there.

The place is quite the tourist attraction, and it serves up over a thousand pounds of wings a day. This made this place the perfect place to watch the Sabres play.

But first, I had to do the obvious. Drink a lot of LaBatt's Blue and eat a full plate of chicken wings. They were soooooo good. They were also considerably larger than your average wing size, and I did my best to suck up all the meat into my belly.

Chicken wings are such a part of the bar's identity that you can buy a foam chicken wing hat for $25. I was drinking LaBatt's, but not enough of it to buy one of those hats.

The bar itself was a simple one. It was pretty packed with Buffalo fans cheering on their team.

Sabres defenseman Henrik Tallinder scored his first career playoff goal 33 seconds in and I had dreams of a blowout. Things would not happen that way, unfortunately, and only co-captain Chris Drury's power-play goal at 7:56 in the second period put Buffalo up 2-1. Ottawa would score that period to tie it up. The third period went scoreless.

It was overtime.

It was tense.

I did not come to a Buffalo bar to watch them lose.

No way!

GOOOOAAAAALLLLLL!

Life was good when the unknown Jason Pominville scored the winning goal for the Sabres at 2:26 of OT to win the series for Buffalo 4-1.

It was time for some serious drinking.