Buffalo Rising Online

Dave Staba

The Buffalo Sabres face the Philadelphia Flyers this afternoon in a nationally televised Easter Sunday game with no real meaning whatsoever, since Buffalo wrapped up the President’s Trophy – given to the team with the most regular-season points – with Saturday’s 2-0 win over Washington.

So there won’t be any drama in the 1 p.m. telecast on Channel 2. Still, it’s a chance to see how Tim Connolly (who scored a fluky goal, which can be seen here by clicking on the 300K or 700K link, on his fourth shift after missing the first 80 games with post-concussion syndrome and a stress fracture in his leg) is coming along, see Martin Biron looks in a Flyers uniform and hope that no one gets hurt.

Today’s truly meaningful game doesn’t start until 3:30, when the Islande…

Dave Staba

A 12-week beginner’s running course designed to prepare for two of the area’s biggest races, the J.P. Morgan Chase Corporate Challenge and the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure, started recently at Fleet Feet Buffalo on Elmwood Avenue.

The program is still accepting new runners and is designed to prepare them to compete in and complete one or both events. This year’s Corporate Challenge is scheduled for June 7 in Delaware Park, with the Race for the Cure, which benefits breast cancer research, following two days later.

Training can also be geared toward other races. More details are available by stopping by Fleet Feet Buffalo, 892 Elmwood Ave., calling 332-3501 or e-mailing Dan@fleetfeetbuffalo.com.

Online registration for the 3.5-mile 27th Annual Corporate Challenge, which benefi…

Dave Staba

The Buffalo Bisons’ home opener was scheduled for today. So, of course, it snowed.

Buffalo’s 3 p.m. first pitch against the Richmond Braves has been rescheduled for Friday as part of a doubleheader set to start at 4 p.m.

The expanded wait for baseball’s return, coinciding as it does with Sunday’s holiday, provides an ideal time to consider perhaps the greatest of all Bisons, Luke Easter.

Easter arrived in Buffalo in 1956, with his career in baseball and the sport’s lifespan in the city both seemingly coming to an end.

Easter was 41, or somewhere thereabouts. Different accounts place his date of birth somewhere between 1911 and 1921. His obituary in the New York Times listed it as Aug. 4, 1915, so we’ll go with that.

Buffalo’s parent club through the early 1950s, the Detroit Tigers, had abandone…

Dave Staba

Buffalo’s 4-1 win in Pittsburgh on Tuesday night provided one more reason for confidence heading into the playoffs, as the Sabres delivered their best overall defensive performance in a month while clamping down on the Penguins’ group of underage stars.

The two points also clinched the Northeast Division and Eastern Conference regular-season championships, of course, but those were little more than formalities. Barring an utter collapse over the last few games, winning both banners was inevitable.

The most significant games when it comes to the only truly important keepsake issued by the National Hockey League took place in Montreal, Toronto, Tampa Bay and Long Island.

Dave Staba

As gratifying as the trade of Willis McGahee was to many, many fans and observers of the Buffalo Bills, it did leave a rather large gap in the team’s depth chart.

The team could use the 12th pick in the upcoming NFL draft to select Marshawn Lynch of California or Oklahoma’s Adrian Peterson, the two top runners in a rather shallow pool. Or they could go after San Diego backup Michael Turner, a possibility floated in newspapers both here and there.

That first-rounder alone won’t be enough to land the 5-foot-10, 237-pound fourth-year pro, according to Kevin Acee of the San Diego Union-Tribune:

Buffalo, Dallas, Tennessee and the New York Jets have shown interest in acquiring the restricted free agent. All appear…

Dave Staba

Two days before he leaves to test himself against some of the country’s top amateur boxers at the Midwestern Olympic Trials in Cincinnati, it wouldn’t have been shocking if Lionell Thompson of Buffalo looked past a less-seasoned opponent.

But in the finals of the Capital Management Services Golden Gloves West Regional at McKinley High School on Friday, Thompson stayed focused while pounding out a unanimous decision over Aleem Whitfield of Geneva in the finals of the 178-pound open division.

Though all five judges gave the edge to Thompson after four rounds, Whitfield did not go easily. He frustrated Thompson, who was tied for the seventh spot in the most recent USA Boxing rankings, at times with his movement and lived up to his nickname, “Hammer,” with several strong right hands.

“He was tall and tougher and faster than I expected,” Thompson said. “But I knew if …

Dave Staba

Olympic hopeful Lionell Thompson of Buffalo faces Geneva’s Aleem Whitfield tonight in one of the featured bouts at the Capital Management Golden Gloves Championships tonight at McKinley High School at 1500 Elmwood Ave.

With a win in tonight’s regional final, Thompson -- ranked No. 7 in the country at 178 pounds by USA Boxing – would move on to New York State Golden Gloves Championships in Syracuse on April 13 and 14. Victory there means a trip to Chattanooga, Tenn., for the national Golden Gloves, which run from May 30 to June 5. National champions earn at automatic shot at qualifying for the 2008 U.S. Olympic team.

The rest of tonight’s bouts, which begin at 7:30 p.m. (General admission is $10 in advance, $15 at the door, while ringside seats are $25 in advance, $30 at the door. Call Don Patterson at 400-9697 for more infor…

Dave Staba

This was a great week if you like arbitrary rankings of things that are in actuality impossible to compare, based on made-up mathematical formulas -- particularly if you enjoy it when those arbitrary rankings place Buffalo at the top of the list.

As noted on the front page of Tuesday’s Buffalo News, a scoring system devised by ESPN The Magazine ranked the Buffalo Sabres as the No. 1 franchise in major league sports in terms of value provided to their fans.

It's all good in the Land of Wings: Season ticket sales have rocketed from 5,800 to 14,815 since the 2002-03 season, while local TV ratings have tripled. In February the seven best-selling jerseys at NHL.com belonged to Sidney Crosby and six Sabres, part of…

Dave Staba

The Internet presences of Takeo Spikes and Darwin Walker, the two very large men the Buffalo Bills and Philadelphia Eagles swapped on Monday, depict two men as different as the positions they play.

Spikes’ official site opens with a Flash sequence backed by a mid-tempo beat, with former Buffalo coach Mike Mularkey declaring, “He is everything people talk about.”

The intro lists Spikes’ measurements (6-foot-2, 242 pounds), Pro Bowl appearances and pronounces him to have “the best name in football,” since Takeo is Japanese for “great warrior,” in case you hadn’t heard that mentioned by the guys in the booth for just about every Bills game over the past four years.

Spikes even has a logo, a silhouette of the linebacker celebrating something or other o…