If the Blues organization is looking for a musical theme for this season, I would highly recommend Ringo Starr’s 1971 signature song “It Don’t Come Easy.” Watching the Blues offense and power play struggle recently against teams like Minnesota, Dallas and Edmonton has us all fully aware that we  ”Got to pay your dues if you wanna (cheer for) the Blues.” Yes, this love of ours “keeps growing all the time, and you know it don’t come easy.” The Blues have now won an amazing six of the last seven home games (and the only loss was in overtime); however, four of the victories were by a single goal, and the inability to finish scoring plays resulted in a mediocre 19 goals during that span. Despite the wins, the Blues offense and power play continue to struggle.

Speaking of struggling, the out of playoff contention Buffalo Sabres come visiting tonight to provide yet another chance for the Blues to possibly regain possession of  first place in both the Central Division and the Western Conference. The Sabres have fallen on hard times, sinking to the bottom of the Northeast Division, with a stuttering offense (25th in league ranking) and overwhelmed defense (ranked 24th). All-Star goaltender Ryan Miller is having his worst ever NHL season. Only one defenseman (rookie Marc-Andre Gragnani has a positive plus/minus rating. Supposed lynchpins Robyn Regeher, Christian Ehrhoff and Tyler Myers are a combined minus-32. Yikes! Former Blues shootout star Brad Boyes has only contributed three goals in 34 games, which costs the Buffalo salary cap a $4 million hit.

Birthed by expansion three years after the Blues, the Sabres organization has had some success (one President’s Trophy and three Conference championships). However, like the Blues, they have never won the Stanley Cup.  Buffalo has a rich hockey heritage as the home of the American League Bisons, who trace their lineage back to the 1920s. With their red-white-and blue Pepsi-Cola bottle-cap logo, the Bisons participated in ten Calder Cup finals, winning the AHL playoff championship five times, including 1969, their last year of operation. When the NHL awarded a franchise to the Knox Brothers, Seymour III and Northrup, heirs to the F.W. Woolworth Company fortune, they immediately announced a name-the-team contest, which was, not surprisingly, won by Seymour, who chose the name Sabres, noting it was a weapon carried by a leader and had a double-bladed purpose, strong and decisive on both offense and defense. Former Toronto GM and Coach Punch Imlach was brought in to lead the expansion Sabres. The old Buffalo Memorial Auditorium (affectionately called “The Aud”), built in 1939 as part of a WPA project, was renovated at a cost of $9 million (approximately $47 million in 2012 dollars), raising the roof and expanding hockey seating to almost 16,000.

The No. 1 consensus choice for the 1970 amateur draft was a highly touted center from the Montreal Jr. Canadiens named Gilbert Perreault. Buffalo won the spin of a roulette wheel and quickly chose the junior phenom, much to the dismay of the new expansion Vancouver Canucks, as well as the Montreal Canadiens, who previously had the option to choose any player of French-Canadian descent before the other NHL teams could select players. Since the number on the winning spin of the roulette wheel was 11, Perreault chose that as his number. Perreault went on to be the face of the franchise, scoring 38 goals his rookie season, easily winning the Calder Memorial Trophy. The following year, Buffalo chose sniper Rick Martin from the Montreal Jr. Canadiens and later added right winger Rene Robert in a trade with Pittsburgh. That trio would become known as the French Connection and would lead Buffalo to the playoffs for the first time in 1973. After a sub-par year, the Sabres made the Stanley Cup Finals in 1975 to do battle with the Broadstreet Bullies of Philadelphia. Due to excessive heat in Buffalo that year and the lack of air conditioning in the Aud, most of game three was played in a virtual fog. Players, officials and even the puck were invisible to fans in the stands. And during a faceoff, Sabres winger Jim Lorentz, another ex-Blue, spotted a bat flying across the rink and killed it with his stick. It was the first time an animal was killed during an NHL contest. The Sabres would somehow win that game, but lost the series to the Flyers in six. The French Connection era ended when Robert was traded to Colorado (Rockies) in 1979 and Martin to Los Angeles in 1981. Perreault retired as a Sabre in 1987.

With no French Connection and a troubled defense, Buffalo is a team the Blues can and should outscore. The likely return of winger Alex Steen tonight should improve the Blues offensive capabilities and delight the faithful with another home-ice win. However, as we already know, it won’t come easy.