Buffalo Rising Online

Apr 10th 2007, 10:06am By Dave Staba

The Sabres' first-round playoff series against the New York Islanders doesn't start until Thursday night, and the Stanley Cup won't be awarded for a couple of months, but it's never too early to start making premature predictions.

So I did, in this week's edition of the Niagara Falls Reporter. But not without a bit of foreboding:

After surprisingly reaching the Eastern Conference Finals last year, where they fell in a gripping Game 7 to the eventual Stanley Cup champions from Carolina, then tearing through the 2006-07 campaign as the NHL's best from beginning to end, anything short of the first true championship in Western New York's professional sporting history is going to be a crashing let-down.

That is not fair. That is not reasonable. It just is.

As you'd expect, Ted Nolan did a great job during his first season on Long Island, getting a limited roster to outperform its potential and overcome a chaotic offseason that included the backup goalie, Garth Snow, getting an unlikely promotion to general manager after his predecessor, Neil Smith, got fired 41 days after taking the job.

Nolan got a terrific education in dysfunctional work environments during his Buffalo stint a decade ago, though, and his first Islanders team surged past Toronto and Montreal and into the playoffs despite losing goalie Rick DiPietro, who signed a goofy 15-year contract in the offseason, with a concussion.

Third-string goalie Wade Dubielewicz was the last-week star for the Islanders. But he'll have four full days to think about why he's spent most of his career in the minors or on the bench before the first puck drops, and so will his teammates.

Nolan's presence assures that New York won't go away quietly. But the Sabres' superior firepower -- they scored five goals in the first 15 minutes the last time the teams met, on March 30, and coasted to a 6-4 win -- and playoff experience, not to mention a pretty good coach of its own, assures that the Islanders will, indeed, go away.

The pick here is that Buffalo wraps up the first round in five games. And in the interests of inflated expectations and doing so way earlier than necessary, here's another prediction:

(Dominik) Hasek will be in the building when the Stanley Cup is awarded in June. But he's going to have to watch members of his old team carry it around.

Think you know better? Want to publish it so it can come back and bite you? Here's your opportunity, thanks to the wonders of modern Internet technology ...

(Daniel Briere photo by Mark Dellas of Traffic East.)