It was practically a given, over 30 years ago, that the Buffalo Sabres were going to be a smash success when they joined the National Hockey League in tandem with the Vancouver Canucks for the 1970-71 season.

The Sabres were following in the rich tradition of the Buffalo Bisons, who successfully roamed the ice surfaces of the American Hockey League for 30 seasons, from 1940 to 1970. Western New York was proven hockey country, and the team also drew well from hockey fanatics just across the border in southern Ontario.

Guided by the visionary Knox brothers, Seymour and Northrup, the story of the Sabres really began in the mid-1960s. Hockey fans on the Niagara Frontier, as well as those in Vancouver, were bitterly disappointed when neither city was included three years earlier in 1967 when the NHL's first expansion doubled the League's size from six to 12 teams.

Undeterred, the Knox brothers immediately planned and lobbied for inclusion in the next expansion. For an entry fee of $6 million, triple the cost of the expansion teams in 1967-68, they got what they wanted. Buy Buffalo Sabres Tickets.