Nikita Zadorov<\/a>\u00a0has, perhaps, an inkling of what might be in store. Zadorov, who was selected by the Sabres with the No. 16 pick in the 2013 NHL Draft and who played 67 games over two seasons for Buffalo, was with the Vancouver Canucks when they returned to the playoffs in 2024 after not having had a home playoff game since 2015 (The Canucks made the second round of playoffs in 2020, but all games were played in the bubble in Edmonton because of the COVID-19 pandemic).<\/p>\n\u201cI think that place is going to be nuts,\u201d Zadorov said. \u201cWe can see how big are the (Buffalo) Bills there. And obviously I played in Vancouver when they haven\u2019t played playoff hockey at home for [nine] years and that was probably the loudest building I\u2019ve ever been to. These guys have been waiting for [15] years. I\u2019m expecting a great atmosphere, and I\u2019m going to enjoy it for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n
It will be loud. It will be rowdy. It will be a party.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It will be unlike anything in NHL history, as the Sabres will try to harness it and Bruins will try to feed off it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you don\u2019t enjoy it, you\u2019re in the wrong sport or wrong place,\u201d Zadorov said. \u201cThat\u2019s playoff hockey, that\u2019s pressure, that\u2019s atmosphere, that\u2019s intensity, physicality, blood, sweat, you name it. Everything is enjoyable for sure.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd when you play on the road, the building\u2019s been so hungry and the city\u2019s been so hungry for it, you just want to enjoy it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"But as loud as the building will be, as much emotion as will be spilling out, Ruff said…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":612966,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-612965","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612965","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=612965"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612965\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/612966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=612965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=612965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=612965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}