Changing the Sabres Draft Party

I attended the Sabres Draft Party last Friday and I have a bone to pick with whoever plans this event. While they have a lot of things to do for the kids who are in attendance (such as hockey skills, a bounce house (which my brother Corey stated that Nathan Gerbe was probably in there for a short period of time), and Sabretooth for some entertainment on the empty rink surface), it isn’t exactly a great time for the adults in the crowd.

If you enjoy getting autographs from prospects or retired players and want to sell that stuff on eBay, then they have the signings going on during the draft. I have not participated in any of the signings that they’ve held during the draft with any of the years I went. A part of me wishes that the Sabres organization would hand out a schedule of events during the draft party and show a map of the designated locations of where signings will be. Not only does it make things more organized, but it let’s people know when the signings will begin and when they should show up for the line. Everytime I looked up to where the players were, the lines just looked discombobulated to me. They were also too close together and I couldn’t tell which players were at what station for the signings. I also share the same sentiments of the Puck Drop event. For the past two years, the event has seemed extremely disorganized. In fact, two seasons ago all of the players had left when there were supposed to be signings. People were waiting in line for TWO HOURS until Rob Ray showed up to sign things. I hope they do a better job with that this year but with Ted Black in charge, I’m positive that won’t be a problem.

The second thing was the amount of times taken away from the draft coverage because Kevin Sylvester was doing interviews. I think we missed about half of the picks for the first round because they kept going back and forth to nearly ten minute interviews. They could have still conducted the interviews, but just post them online so that we can watch there, instead of interrupting the coverage. Not everyone at the party was a Sabres fan. For instance, I have a friend who is an Islanders fan that was at the party and she missed who they drafted because they weren’t showing it at the time. I don’t find that very fair at all. I know a lot of people have smartphones and can just check them, but they can’t actually see what’s going on. We came to see the draft, not Kevin Sylvester interview people (as much as I love Kevin, and RJ, and some of the prospects).

All I really ask for is a more organized event and make sure to show most, if not all of the first round. Maybe have an interview here and there, but don’t let it take up almost the whole thing. I know a lot of people who left who were totally disgruntled because they didn’t get what they came for. At least the event was free…

As a side note not relating to this topic at all, I actually knew about the Gerbe signing a month ago based on a source. It was said that the deal would be three years but they were going to release the news around the time of the draft. Well, look at how that all seemed to fall into place.