Buffalo Sabres Owner Terry Pegula On Verge Of Landing Bills
By Chris Gay
Mandatory Credit: Timothy T. Ludwig-USA TODAY Sports
Buffalo Sabres owner Terry Pegula may once again become a Buffalo savior. If multiple media reports prove accurate, Pegula is on the verge landing the Buffalo Bills, too.
You may recall that Pegula, a billionaire nearly anonymous to the sports world, emerged from the mist three years ago to take the Sabres off the hands of their temporary caretaker, fellow western New York billionaire Tom Golisano. Golisano bought the Swords to rescue them from bankruptcy, and then hockey fan Pegula took over their reigns to ensure they stayed put.
Though almost certainly unplanned, the Sabres’ journey from bankruptcy/potential relocation-to-Golisano-to-Pegula-to-stability ended up as an uncommon instance of two unimaginably rich individuals ultimately teaming up to save their region’s NHL team.
But that transaction only eased half the fears of the Queen City’s sports faithful.
For several years now the uncertainty of their National Football League entry’s future weighed heavily on fans of the Buffalo Bills. Late owner Ralph C. Wilson, Jr., a Detroit native, brought the Bills and the old AFL to Buffalo in 1960 and steadfastly guaranteed they would not be moved in his lifetime. And while many Buffalonians rightly believed him, entering 2014 Wilson was 95 years old.
That, combined with the public’s foreknowledge that the team would not transfer to Wilson’s heirs upon his passing and that small-market Buffalo was viewed as too weak to keep the interest of a new owner who could bolt with the Bills for more dollar bill-greener pastures, has kept the area’s football fans on pins and needles longer than this run-on sentence.
For a long time, the only real hope was that Wilson had arranged some clandestine agreement to sell the Bills to a locally interested buyer when his time came. While that didn’t occur, it appeared he did do something just as good, if not better. He signed a lease with Erie County, New York, that is almost unbreakable until 2020 and, also, set up a trust.
While I am by no means a lawyer, the lease/trust combo appears to be some sort of supernatural entity possessing the power to ward off billionaire NFL team poachers with more effectiveness than a crucifix has against vampires.
What’s clear is that Wilson seems to have done practically everything he could for his adopted city. But the Bills still needed someone to step up and keep the team in Erie (or at least Niagara) County. Someone with an affinity for the cold and snow of western New York; someone who would not only want to, but could also afford to, stay in one of the league’s smallest markets.
Re-enter Terry Pegula.
Although the lease and trust did their job of keeping most of the poachers at bay, the relatively unknown Pegula still had to out-muscle much better-known celebrities to gain the Bills in the persons of Donald Trump and John Bon Jovi. And now it seems that as the dust settles on this three way tug-of-war, it will be the mild-mannered Pegula who has successfully wrested the team away from all-comers.
And how did he do it? To paraphrase Teddy Roosevelt, Pegula spoke softly and carried a big wallet.
So if the Bills are his, what does this mean for the Buffalo Sabres? After all, upon his arrival Pegula famously stated that their only reason for existence was to win the Stanley Cup.
Well, the most obvious benefit of Pegula controlling both teams is how dominating the Sabres’ power play will become with Marcel Dareus or Kyle Williams out there screening the goaltender in games played during the Bills’ bye week. Just kidding.
To be honest, I’m not sure. Initially one might think that with all of the money NFL owners pull in annually, some of the Bills’ profits would go to help the Sabres sign top-notch players. But the NHL has a salary cap anyway and, regardless of the NFL, Pegula already has enough money to wallpaper the Louvre.
With his new HarborCenter and extensive renovations to the Sabres’ First Niagara Center home completed, he’s heavily invested in Buffalo. He’s also showed that after some initial errors in handling his inherited hockey personnel, he’s capable of learning from his mistakes. As a result, the Sabres now have a solid general manager and the #1 rated prospects pool in the National Hockey League.
In addition to the aforementioned, he’s also done some other very smart things off the ice. He re-purchased the Rochester Americans so that the Sabres are once again conveniently located only an hour away from their top AHL affiliate. He snatched the NHL Combine from Toronto and brought it to Buffalo. He’s arranged for the Erie Otters, whose roster not-coincidentally includes one Connor McDavid, to play a home game in the First Niagara Center.
One big question is will he feel the need to build a sparkling new football stadium or determine that the Nixon era-built Ralph Wilson Stadium, which has just finished undergoing $135 million in renovations, is adequate?
The conventional wisdom is that Buffalo should probably go with a new pad. But the good news is that with Pegula in control, that decision doesn’t have to be rushed.
To somewhat reiterate an earlier story I wrote on Pegula, whatever he plans to do with the teams or their revenues, what’s vastly more important to local sports fans is that both the Sabres and Bills will be securely entrenched in Buffalo for many, many years. And no one can put a value on finally achieving that sort of peace of mind.
The end result is that Buffalo won the lottery when Terry Pegula appeared, and good for them. It’s a great sports city deserving of a great owner. And a great owner it now has.
In fact, I really wish we had someone like Terry Pegula in Hartford.