JEANNERET: Remembering Paul Wieland

Paul Wieland was a good friend, and I don't know if people realize it or not, but to my knowledge, he was the last original Sabre. He joined the public relations staff in 1970 and worked with the organization until 1995.
Paul passed away on February 16. It's very significant and it's a sad thing. All deaths are sad.
He was a good co-worker as well because he did a lot of games with me on the air in the early days. I had nobody. It was me doing radio with no engineer, no color man, nothing! It was bare bones and that wasn't unusual in those days.
Paul had, I like to call it, the most fertile mind I've ever seen. He came up with Taro Tsujimoto and the plastic ice pranks that he used to come up with on April Fool's Day, which a lot of people bit on, by the way! I could tell you the names of some of them!

He was just an incredible investigative person who loved to be involve in every aspect of the organization. He had to get his nose out a couple of times when he almost got it clipped off. He wasn't trying to be the big shot; he was really just trying to help somebody out and help improve things.

I don't remember when I found out about the Taro Tsujimoto hoax, but to this day I'm sure there are people still waiting to see the stats on Taro Tsujimoto.
You even had the general manager of the team, Punch Imlach, aware of it. He thought it was great! He was putting one over on the league! I don't know how the league took it to be honest, but it was a real good one. Once they grabbed a hold of it, they had a good time of it.
Speaking of fun, the greatest thing about this current Sabres team is where else are you going to get two-and-a-half hours of entertainment like you do with this club?
Honestly!

Are they always going to win? No, of course not. But are they fun to watch when they're trying to come from behind? Of course they are!
It's such a departure from the recent past with no playoffs. And just because they're in a playoff spot now doesn't mean they're going to make it - I'm betting that they will if they can stay away from more injuries like Alex Tuch's - but again, it comes down to fun.
People want to see them win and they're working down to the very end.
I'm definitely feeling the buzz again among the fanbase and I love being in contact with the fans.
A fellow with a service dog came up to me on Saturday in Batavia said, "I just want to tell you, we had a new baby. And his name is Riley John. You know what the RJ means." And I said, "That's very nice. Thank you very much."

I'll be at The BFLO Store on Transit Road on Friday at 5:30 p.m. They're also selling new RJ T-shirts, which I don't believe the public has seen yet. It's all very exciting and I hope to see you there.