In Buffalo They’re Searching for Marine Life

Buffalo News columnist Jim Kelley isn’t happy about the plight of the Buffalo Sabres, who were the NHL’s Eastern Conference champions last season but are off to a 1-6-2 start.

“They dropped another banner from the rafters in Marine Midland Arena Wednesday night,” he wrote. “The good news is, it didn’t hit anyone. The bad news is, that for the better part of 60 minutes, neither did the team underneath it.

“The season is three weeks old and the Sabres are still playing like it’s the first day of training camp and the players are all wearing ‘Hi My Name Is’ tags.”

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Trivia time: Who was the MVP of the 1995 National League championship series?

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Perish the thought: Peter Gammons poses a tough question in the Boston Globe:

“Can you survive a winter’s night without a camera shot of Bobby Valentine?”

Attention, Bob and Paul: Blackie Sherrod, in the Dallas Morning News, repeats a coaching tip he heard from Frank Broyles when Broyles was at Arkansas:

“It’s better to have a 7-3 record than a 9-1 because if you lose only one game, critics have all winter to concentrate on ways how you should have won it.”

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Stone wall: Slow-footed Detroit Red Wing defenseman Larry Murphy, asked if he thought he had lost a step, replied, “I’m not sure I ever had one.”

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Thanks, John: The question, “What’s a dauber?” posed in a recent Morning Briefing, is answered by John Hall of San Clemente.

“Dauber is a horse that ran second to Lawrin in the 1938 Kentucky Derby, paying $12 to place and $6 to show,” he said.

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Marriage vows: Offensive line coach Hudson Houck of the Dallas Cowboys, explaining how offensive linemen must learn each other’s nuances, put it this way:

“It’s like being married for a long time and knowing your wife. She doesn’t have to say anything for you to know what she’s thinking. That’s how it has to be on the offensive line.”

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What’s in a name: A case of food poisoning prevented singer Meat Loaf from performing the national anthem before Monday night’s game between the Dallas Cowboys and New York Giants at Giants Stadium--but he insists it wasn’t from meatloaf.

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The youngest: Gil Morgan, who was 11 days past 50 when he won the 1996 Pacific Bell Senior Classic at Wilshire Country Club, is the youngest player to win a Senior PGA Tour event. He will be back at Wilshire for another shot at the tournament this week.

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Trivia answer: Mike Devereaux of the Atlanta Braves.

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And finally: There may never be a group of football players as famous as the Four Horsemen, who received their name from Grantland Rice’s lead after Notre Dame had beaten Army in 1924, 13-7:

“Outlined against a blue, gray October sky, the Four Horsemen rode again. In dramatic lore they are known as famine, pestilence, destruction and death. These are only aliases. Their real names are Stuhldreher, Miller, Crowley and Layden.”

They don’t write ‘em like that anymore.