Heads held high

Heads held high

Sabres loss is a patch of rough ice soon to be smoothed over

Sloppy and outplayed would not have been used to describe the Sabres a week ago, but criticism hit home this weekend. Although the game came to a thrilling peak during a heart-breaking shootout, it was not a good night for the Sabres.

A lot of people might say "they played their hardest, and it was close," but in reality that is just not the case. Carrying their lackluster play of Thursday into the weekend, the Sabres were not on their game while trying to break the within-reach NHL record for straight wins opening a season.

But this is by no means the end. In a season of such great length, there is bound to be a surge of highs and lows. Even the best team in the NHL will have its nights of glory and its ugly moments, and many will agree that this rollercoaster ride is part of what makes it so exciting.

Calling it a good October for Buffalo hockey would be quite the understatement, but fans and viewers need to realize we will be stomping our feet and cheering until May. Such an early run is just a blip on the radar in the greater scheme of the Sabres' pursuit of the Stanley Cup, and in an 82-game season it is truly a battle of endurance.

When Thomas Vanek was the last skater unable to put it by Thrasher's goalie Kari

Lehtonen, the game was over and Buffalo's hope for the NHL record was shattered.

Instead of seeing fans stand up and dash to the parking lot, they remained standing as the Sabres skated to center ice to receive a standing ovation. This is the kind of spirit that needs to remain with our not perfect, yet still league-leading Sabres. It's nice to see that the respect for our home team is not a fleeting notion of their recent success, but a genuine anticipation for what they have already achieved and for the thrills to come.

DirecTV joins in on mudslinging

Satellite provider takes an outrageous swipe at its competition

It's inevitable. November in a major election year means the bombardment of political jargon and mudslinging of television ads that makes you glad to see an almost-funny Radio Shack commercial, or the latest compilation CD of all those hits you don't need to hear again. But it is beyond ridiculous for competing businesses to give into the same tactics so widely abused by politicians.

A near full-page ad in The Buffalo News on Sunday read "Say no to the Time Warner monopoly, you have a choice, Buffalo. Say yes to DIRECTV." Convenient pricing guides follow. Aside from blatantly attacking the competition with rhetoric rivaling those of Foley or Hevesi, the ad fuels viewers with more misinformation than the inescapable Reynolds-Davis congressional battle.

DirecTV says there should be "no monopoly" in cable providing, and they are completely right. There is no monopoly. Such a business term means the exclusive control of supply in a particular service or the lack of economic competition, and neither of those definitions characterize the television provider market. Even with Time Warner's recent acquisition of Adelphia Cable, both companies have relatively comparable market shares. The ever-growing customer base of DirecTV surpassed 15 million last year, and even with the recent combined power of Time Warner they only host 20 million viewers in the nation.

The use of deliberate competition bashing has no place in the realm of marketing to begin with, but if it must be so, the least DirecTV can do is get the facts straight first.