While Waiting For An Ehrhoff Decision and Anticipating a Play For Brad Richards...

...I'd like to direct your attention to The Maine Hockey Journal and something that got lost in the all of the happenings concerning the draft and the Robyn Regehr decision.

The official return of the Rochester Americans.

Darcy Regier, AHL Commisioner Dave Andrews,
Terry Pegula and Ted Black.
The Sabres family is shaping up nicely with the
return of the Rochester Americans

It's an article from June 24th concerning the Buffalo Sabres move from Portland back to Rochester, and if ever there was amicable split between a parent club and it's affiliate, here it is.

It was written by Chris Roy and starts out by summing up the situation perfectly, "It sort of like your current girlfriend dumping you only to go back to their longtime ex."

The process of the move began back in November, 2010 when Terry Pegula was getting serious about buying the Sabres and had the vision to re-unite Rochester with Buffalo.

With Pegula laying out his plans in such a way that made perfect sense for the Sabres organization, Pirates Managing Owner and CEO Brian Petrovek indicated that "we would in no way prevent that from happening.” Petrovek continued, “It was the right thing for Terry Pegula. If I was sitting in Terry’s shoes and had his financial wherewithal I would probably be looking at the same thing. So in the best interest in our league and the Buffalo Sabres I would never put our franchise in a position to where we would have stopped (the sale).”

Class, through and through.

Although we don't know the specifics of the Pirates buy-out, it doesn't really matter. “It only took a couple conversations on what it would take to release and terminate (from the affiliation agreement), Petrovek said, "and as you would expect with the relationship we had with the seller and the buyer that was the easy part."

The article continues with the importance of Rochester being a strong AHL team and market and gives props to the success of the organization in Portland for raising the bar for the team and it's fans.

Nice work on all sides concerning the return to Rochester for the Buffalo Sabres.

Good luck to a classy franchise in Portland.