"Both of these games have felt like late-season games," said Sabres coach Lindy Ruff after the game. "It's just rolled over."

This Sabres team, as demonstrated in the post season, just doesn't give up! It's a characteristic akin to the Buffalo Bills in the early 90s when they went to four straight Super Bowls. In fact, this team may be even more resilient than that Bills team that would not let a devastating Super Bowl loss knocking them down.

The Sabres have picked it up right where they left off last June. Two straight shootouts, two dramatic wins.

It was as good a home opener one could ask for. Three dramatic come backs after being down 2 goals, and then the shootout goals by Maxim and Vanek to ice the cake. It was also Danny Briere's 29^th birthday and it was a great present, especially his late third period goal.

Ruff decided to shoot first in the shootout, as it is the home team’s choice. While Daniel Briere was stopped cold, Afinogenov and Vanek were able to get their shots past Huet and send the crowd home delirious.

"It was a good play by Vanek," described Afinogenov about Vanek’s move. "He just took the puck to the net and tried to push it in and I had an empty net. It's a lot of fun to win a game like that."

The Sabres are definitely earning the title of Kardiac Kids. They had mastered the ability to stage late game comebacks time and again. It is becoming too frequent for Ruff, who would probably want his team to build an early lead and keep it.

"We've won two games in very dramatic fashion. But we were a team last year that won a lot of close games where we found ways to win. It's important to win those types of games."

The kids themselves realize that it could become a daunting task to come back every game.

"It's not the way we want to win,"said the sophomore Pominville, who is learning coach-speak at an early age. "We didn't play the way we wanted to, but we bounced back and got two big goals and pulled it out."

The crowd after the game was in as festive a mood as I saw after they beat the Toronto Maple Leafs in game 5 of the 1999 Eastern Conference Finals. Car horns were blowing, fans were chanting "Let’s go Buffalo" and running on the streets in boisterous celebration. And this was only the first home game of the season. Shades of when the Buffalo Bills beat the Miami Dolphins on opening day on that warm and sunny September day in 1980, breaking that ten-year jinx the Dolphins had on the Bills.

"There was a lot of excitement in that game, a lot of end-to-end action," described Ruff. "I thought both teams showed an incredible amount of passion for their first game and our second game."

"And now do you believe?"

Those words are etched into the memories of all Sabres fans, probably for their lifetime. Rick Jeanerette bellowed those words when Jason Pominville scored a shorthanded overtime goal against the Ottawa Senators last spring to eliminate the team most predicted to win the Cup.

After Friday night's gut-wrenching shootout win, the fans are really starting to believe that this could be the years. Some left early when the Canadiens held a 4-2 lead late into the third period. They may have been the same fans who left the Bills-Oilers wildcard playoff game that turned into the greatest comeback in football history. These Sabres are good, scary good, as Jeanerette also said after that famous Pominville goal.

With the Sabres crowd going ballistic over the horrific officiating in the later parts of the game, Daniel Briere turned their anger into pure ecstasy when he roared in on Habs goalie Cristobal Huet and shot through the goalie's legs to cut the Habs lead to 4-3. Actually, when the play was developing, a linesman had fallen down to the delight of the crowd and they stayed on their feet and jumped in greater celebration when the red light went on for Briere’s goal.

Briere, the new Sabres $5 million man, celebrated his birthday in dramatic fashion with the late third period goal.

"For being October and the second game of the season, that was pretty wild," said an energetic Briere. "You get that adrenaline rush that stays with you because the fans stay into it. You don't want to disappoint them. The crowd was rocking. The last five minutes, the crowd carried us for a big part of it."

Now the Sabres travel to Ottawa again where they committed one of the biggest heists in the Canadian capital's history.

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