How about listening to roundtable discussions and interviews with Sabres players and front office executives anytime you want? Downloading photos of your favorite team members. Or getting stats and bios on Sabres players of the past. Charts of player’s salaries. Posting your own editorials and comments on any one of many blogs and message boards in cyberspace.

It’s all there, a large slice of Sabres heaven for fans who want their Sabres hockey fix all the time, starting with the team’s own website.

“The new version of Sabres.com was introduced just before the preseason, and we’ve received very positive comments from the public about the site,” reports Brian Wheeler, web content coordinator for the Buffalo Sabres.

Indeed, go to the team site and you will find far more than a simple schedule and a link to buy tickets. The Sabres website offer a cornucopia of multimedia features, extensive data on players, statistics and public participation features such as a message board and a fan scrapbook, where people can upload their favorite photos.

Wheeler acts as an in-house member of the media corps, participating in player interviews and daily conferences with Coach Lindy Ruff. Wheeler, who previously worked in public relations for the Buffalo Bills as well as running the media department for the NLL Buffalo Bandits, also gets to try his hand at being a radio talk show host…sort of.

“Twice a week, we do a podcast called ‘The Morning Skate’ which can be accessed on our website,” Wheeler explains. “Myself, Kevin Sylvester, Greg Bauch and Pat Fisher talk about the team and interview players and management. Larry Quinn, Dan DiPofi and Darcy Regier from our front office have been our guests, as well as numerous players.”

And while a mirror site called Sabresalumni.com covers news of the team from a historical perspective, there are numerous unofficial fan sites that also cover the team.

One of the largest fan sites is Sabresfans.com, run by Western New York transplant Bill Pax from his home in New Hampshire. “I started the site five years ago as a challenge,” explains Pax. “Many fan sites were shutting down back then, and I was a longtime poster on an older board and wanted a place to post, yet no one was stepping up.” And with that his site was founded.

You wonder how Pax keeps tabs on his favorite team? Well, like any other hockey nut, Pax has the NHL satellite package, travels to Buffalo for four or five games a year and also makes the short ride down to Boston when the Sabres play there.

Pax relies on a few volunteers, usually posters who are loyal to the site, to add content besides his own. Pax said that, while it may seem like a fun thing to do, people soon discover how much work it takes to contribute to the site. But he does have a few regulars, and while he doesn’t do much in the way of interviewing Sabres players and coaches, occasionally he’ll have content from the Sabres’ opposing clubs.

Sabresfans.com features game recaps, opinion columns, statistics and the like. But on this site a couple of things stand out, an extensive history of the franchise—Pax believed that there wasn’t a sufficiently thorough site out there dedicated to the club’s history—and a “cost analysis” link. Here one can determine exactly how much bang for the buck each Sabre is contributing to the team. The most cost-efficient Sabre is Brian Campbell at roughly $17,000 per point.

Pax stated that while site traffic is definitely up from a year ago, it doesn’t need to be hockey season for his site to get plenty of hits. “By and large we have hardcore fans on our site,” he explains, “and while traffic is high during the season, events such as the NHL Draft and the times during the lockout when the season was being cancelled brought about plenty of traffic.” Special happenings, such as the Adelphia-Rigas-bankruptcy situation, are a case in point of how things keep busy on his site, even during the club’s darkest hour.

These are just two sites of many out there devoted to the Blue and Go…oops, we mean Black and Red. If you have some free time to kill, check ’em out and talk it up with Sabres fans here and around the globe.

TARO SEZ…

• Circle March 27. That’s the next date the Sabres get to face the New York Rangers and say hello to one Mr. Kasparaitis. Last week’s shot on Tim Connolly was yet another example of how to be a dirty player.

• Still no respect…the NHL on NBC national schedule is in full swing. And the Sabres aren’t on it.

• Lots of charitable causes going on around the arena…on Feb. 8 from 11am–7pm the American Red Cross will hold a blood drive at the arena. And players’ wives will be collecting food and donations for the Food Bank of WNY before home games in February.

• But ahhh…that black Corvette! It’s on display in the pavilion, and 750 chances at $100 each are being sold with proceeds benefiting the Sabres Foundation. The raffle takes places on April 7. Get your chance now!