Buffalo Sabres Logo — Buffalo Sabres are a team of professional ice hockey U.S. located in the city of Buffalo (New York). Founded in 1970, emerged as one of the expansion teams of the championship. The Sabres now play for the National Hockey League, framed in the Northeastern Division.

The Sabres were, along with Vancouver Canucks, one of two expansion franchises that appeared after the 1970-71 season in the NHL. Its first owners were Seymour Knox III and Northrup Knox, two members of a family of entrepreneurs and bankers of Western New York, and the team caused excitement in a city that already had successful teams in the lower leagues. The name chosen for the franchise was Sabres (sabers).

The team, which played their first seasons in the Buffalo Memorial Auditorium, got the first draft choice in his debut season, choosing the French-Canadian player Gilbert Perrault. In his debut season managed to score 38 goals Perrault, and thus was awarded the Calder Memorial Trophy for best rookie of the year. However, the Sabres failed to qualify for playoffs in their debut. In later years joined Perrault rookie Rick Martin, who broke the mark of Gilbert in his debut season with 44 goals, and Pittsburgh player René Robert. These three players form what some journalists dubbed as “The French Connection”, in homage to his French-Canadian origin, and were the architects of the first classification of the Sabres for the 1972-73 season playoff.

After a year without playing the finals in the 1974-75 season the Sabres re-classified as champions of their division. The team reached the final of the Stanley Cup, but lost in six games against Philadelphia Flyers. One season after the team would sign striker Danny Gare, which continued his streak in the Sabres since the 1975-76 campaign. During the following years the team achieve a conference championship in 1980 and were the first in the United States to beat a combination of the Soviet Union when they were touring the country in the Americas. The “French Connection” broke with the beginning of the 1980s.

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