Going into their third year of existence as a National Hockey League expansion team, not a whole lot was expected of the Buffalo Sabres in the fall of 1972. Despite the presence of two rising young scoring stars in Gilbert Perreault and Rick Martin, each of whom had been named NHL rookie of the year, the Sabres figured to be lagging well behind in the powerful East Division of what was then a 16-team league. After all, they had won less than a quarter of their games combined in their first two years as a franchise. Instead, the Sabres gave their growing legion of passionate fans a season that no one has ever forgotten. The 1972-73 team went undefeated in October and ultimately did what the well-heeled hockey establishment said would be next to impossible when the season began – it finished fourth in the East and qualified for the Stanley Cup playoffs. True, the Sabres were knocked out in the first round by the dynastic Canadiens, but it took Montreal six hard-fought games to subdue the Sabres. This is the story of that overachieving team, complete with a month-by-month synopsis of the season, and profiles of the key players who became so beloved that when the final minutes ticked off the clock in Game Six of the first-round playoff series, a sellout crowd of more than 15,000 at Memorial Auditorium stood as one and repeatedly chanted “Thank You Sabres.”
