Sabres notebook
Ruff brushes off incident with official
The Buffalo Sabres and the National Hockey League appear ready to move on from Monday night’s incident in Pittsburgh that saw referee Tim Peel allegedly curse at goaltender Ryan Miller during a stoppage early in the second period.
Sabres coach Lindy Ruff was diplomatic when asked for his reaction after Wednesday’s pregame skate.
“That would be unusual,” Ruff said of Peel’s behavior. “The referees 99 percent of the time show a lot of class and they’re under a lot of duress. They take a lot of abuse, even to a point where they give players a lot of room. If this is just that rare occasion, it’s a rare occasion that happened.”
“There is no Ryan Miller situation,” Frank Brown, the NHL’s vice president of communications, said in an e-mail to The Buffalo News in response to a request for comment.
Miller said Peel cursed at him twice after he asked the official a question. Replays showed Peel stopping play two seconds after a faceoff and pointedly talking to Miller in the goal crease. Seven minutes later, an agitated Peel gave Ruff a bench minor for arguing an interference call on Thomas Vanek.
“When you get a bench minor, it’s an accumulation of things but it was deserved on my part,” Ruff said. “ . . . There was no excuse for me saying what I said or how loud I said it. Those are commonly something that’s ignored but something had stirred him to the point that I got the minor I got.”
Captain Craig Rivet, the closest Sabre to the Miller-Peel exchange, would not comment specifically on it but took the high road on the life of an official.
“There’s going to be heated debates and arguments and they have an extremely difficult job,” Rivet said. “Anyone who says they don’t is absolutely crazy. It’s almost like they’re out there playing against two teams and 20,000 fans every night.”
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Sabres managing partner Larry Quinn met the media during the first intermission and issued yet another emphatic denial that owner B. Thomas Golisano is actively shopping the team.
The story, based on anonymous sources in Western New York Hockey Magazine, broke as Quinn arrived at this week’s NHL Board of Governors meetings in West Palm Beach, Fla.
“When I walked into the Board of Governors room, everybody was laughing,” Quinn said. “They said, ‘We know you’re not selling. Who’s the idiot that leaked this story?’ ”
Quinn did not deny the team would take offers if any came but said no offer would be accepted that would move the team. He added the team has no plans to play a portion of its games in Hamilton, Ont.
“The only thing people need to know is if we ever do sell the team, we’re never going to sell it to somebody moving it out of Buffalo,” Quinn said. “ . . . This is the Buffalo Sabres, not the ‘Niagara Region Sabres,’ and we plan to play our games here.”
Quinn did admit that there would always be a price that might interest Golisano.
“If Donald Trump walks in here tomorrow and offers us $500 million, the team is being sold,” Quinn said earlier in the day on WGR Radio. “I don’t want to ever say absolutes because life is a fluid thing.
“But do we have a ‘for sale’ sign out? Does Tom want to sell? Have we hired an investment banking firm to find us a buyer? The answer to all three is no.”
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Former Sabre Chris Gratton cleared waivers Wednesday and was assigned by the Lightning to Norfolk of the AHL. He has played 1,086 NHL games — including 244 with the Sabres from 1999-2003.
Gratton, 33, has never spent a day in the minor leagues and has yet to decide if he’ll report. He could be suspended if he doesn’t.
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