A somber day for the Buffalo Sabres was punctuated by a simple memorial the team erected Friday morning on Alumni Plaza outside KeyBank Center, a few hours after the death of beloved broadcaster Rick Jeanneret.
There were two giant white letters that simply said “RJ” in honor of Jeanneret, who died Thursday at 81. And there were banners inside the door that said “Thank you” and included the catchphrases to some of his greatest calls.
“We’re going to celebrate RJ every day,” General Manager Kevyn Adams said on a video call with reporters. “You walk into KeyBank Center and he’s part of the fabric of this organization. He’s part of the history, the legendary calls, the relationships.
“I don’t think there’s a hockey fan in the world that doesn’t know that voice. You can close your eyes and that’s just the voice and that’ll be with us all forever.”
Coach Don Granato concurred.
“He conveyed the history of the Buffalo Sabres to the hockey world,” Granato said of Jeanneret. “He does make you want to be a Sabre. ... He makes you proud to be a Sabre. Just an amazing person. He would walk into our coaches room and sense the mood right away and influence it in a real positive manner. With perspective, with tact, with humor, he just had a feel for things and moments. ... What a spectacular opportunity for me to be around him the last few years.”
Captain Kyle Okposo said Friday that the Sabres enjoyed rekindling their tradition with their 50th anniversary celebration in 2019 and with the tributes to Jeanneret in the 2021-22 season.
Okposo fondly remembered “RJ Night” on April 1, 2022, as one of the signature moments of his NHL career.
Rick Jeanneret, the legendary play-by-play voice of the Buffalo Sabres who became one of the franchise's biggest icons over his 51-year career behind the microphone, died Thursday night, the Sabres announced.
Following a lavish pregame ceremony to put Jeanneret in the arena rafters, the Sabres held on for a 4-3 win over the Nashville Predators. After the game ended, Jeanneret was brought onto the ice by Alex Tuch and Cody Eakin to again be saluted by the team and the crowd. The players and coaches then encircled their beloved voice for a team picture for all time.
“He’s somebody who has been ingrained not only with our organization, but with the city and Western New York for such a long time,” Okposo told The Buffalo News in a phone interview. “And we wanted to make sure that we gave him as special a night as possible.
“Luckily, we were able to win a hockey game. But that kind of pales in comparison to what happens afterwards with him coming out on the ice. I hope that he felt how much we appreciated him and how much he was appreciated by all the fans that were in attendance, that were watching on TV from around the country and around the world.”
After the on-ice celebration, the Sabres retreated to the dressing room, and Okposo presented Jeanneret with the sword the club used for its player of the game that season. It was a scene the team captured on social media, with the captain saying to the broadcaster, “You’ve had some of the most iconic calls in this entire league. It gives me goosebumps just thinking about them. So thank you for everything you’ve done for this organization and this one’s for you.”
Okposo said Friday that he knew he was going to be tasked to speak at that moment and called it a “daunting task.”
“You wanted your words to live up to the stature of the night,” Okposo said. “I just wanted to make sure that it was as much about him as possible. I hope that he felt how much he meant to us as a team in that moment, and we truly just wanted it to be his moment in time.”
Many players entered the building that night wearing Jeanneret’s trademark suspenders and Granato eschewed his suit and tie for a similar outfit during his postgame news conference.
“It had tremendous impact on me,” Granato said. “There’s no possible way I would have ever imagined myself wearing suspenders into a press conference. (Senior director of communications Nicole Hendricks) was pushing me to do it. So out of character for me, so out of my comfort zone. And he compelled me to put them on because of who he was. I can’t imagine I do that for anybody else.”
Okposo said the team’s young players quickly learned how much Jeanneret has meant to the franchise. His final call on April 29, 2022, came on an overtime goal by Casey Mittelstadt that beat Chicago. It was assisted by Dylan Cozens, and both players spoke afterwards how significant it was to be part of that play.
“Something that we tried to do as an organization over the past couple of years is get in touch with the tradition of the Sabres and get in touch with the people that came before us,” Okposo said. “And you can’t talk about that tradition without RJ. I think that the young guys really grew to understand that.”
From Banner Night to the Last Call and every interaction at a restaurant or grocery store, Rick Jeanneret knew how much Western New York loved him.
Longtime broadcast partner Rob Ray first met RJ as a rookie in 1988 and has been on the team’s broadcasts for nearly 20 years. The pair were close friends, travel partners on the road and not afraid to needle each other on and off the air.
“I just think he had such a passion for the game,” Ray said. “And then a bigger passion for this organization, because it didn’t matter how tough things were and how bad things were. When you sat and had a conversation with him, he’d always try to come up with a positive.”
Ray said a couple of times near the end of Jeanneret’s career as the announcer moved past age 75, he would ask his partner why he was still calling the games. Jeanneret said it wasn’t about him but more about fans depending on him to call games they couldn’t get to or even see.
“He loved the people,” Ray said. “And I think that’s the biggest thing.”
The daily “Sabres Live” show on MSG that airs at noon for an hour was stretched to three hours on Friday. Hosts Brian Duff and Martin Biron were both red-eyed and emotional when the program signed on.
“It is absolutely crushing,” Biron said. “I won’t lie.”
Added Duff later in the program, “The hearts are heavy, but they’re also filled with all the great words and calls in Rick’s history.”
Current play-by-play man Dan Dunleavy joined his broadcast partners for one segment and reminded them how lucky they all should feel about their relationships with Jeanneret.
“All three of us can agree that if you had told the 5-year-old us that at some point in our careers we would work with a personality like Rick Jeanneret so closely for this long as we have ... you never would have imagined it,” Dunleavy said. “But it happened and I’m certainly glad for that. As our boss (VP of Media and Content Chrisanne Bellas) put it last night, we were blessed and she’s not wrong.”
Some other comments from the program:
Ex-player and coach Lindy Ruff: “He just had an incredible knack for nailing any call, any goal, any win. An incredible voice of the game.”
Former goalie Ryan Miller: “It’s not just the voice, it’s the person. ... We loved his voice. It’s such a background — and sometimes foreground — to what was going on on the ice. But it was more than that. Not many people can accomplish that.”
Longtime former equipment manager Rip Simonick: “A true blue solid man to befriend. There’s not 10 people in sports I’ve been closer to than Rick Jeanneret.”
As a veteran of 16 NHL seasons, the last seven in Buffalo, Okposo has watched plenty of teams and listened to plenty of broadcasters. He said sometimes he won’t watch certain teams’ feeds just because of who is behind the microphone.
“When I was with the Islanders, I watched a lot of Buffalo games because of RJ,” Okposo said. “He just called such a good game and it was easy to listen to and it was fun. There were no moments you ever wanted to hit the mute button. He was engaging. He was captivating. He called the game in such a unique way that you just always wanted to watch the Sabres games. He’s a legend.”
