Sabres' Ruff appreciates passionate fans

Standing in the hallway adjacent to the Sabres' locker room, Buffalo coach Lindy Ruff smiled.

Ah, the memories. To be back in the friendly confines of the Wells Fargo Center . . . where Ruff can guarantee that his team will be greeted with boos on arrival, death threats are occasionally made to his players, and there is a pretty decent chance you can exit with a suit that smells like a brewery.

Ruff recalled yesterday the time he was blindsided by a beer thrown by a Flyers fan on April 20, 2000, as he was walking off the bench after his team had just been eliminated in five games.

In fact, one reporter asked him if he brought a waterproof suit on this trip.

"Thank god I got drilled with something good," Ruff laughed. "You have passionate fans here, and we have passionate fans back on our end."

There was also that time, in the 1997 Eastern Conference semifinals, when villain Matthew Barnaby received a death threat on his hotel phone in Center City.

"We were staying at a Marriott in the Society Hill section of town," Barnaby told the Daily News in 2009. "These were the days before everyone on the team had a cellphone, so we used the hotel phone a lot.

"It was the night before one of the games and I got a call. I picked it up and the person said to me, 'If you go to the game tomorrow, I will shoot you from the top row of the [CoreStates] Center.' "

Rather than tense up, Barnaby played it cool.

"I didn't put too much merit into it," he said. "I was a little nervous but I didn't lose any sleep over it."

And neither has Ruff. That's what makes this rivalry with Buffalo so much fun. You never know when the next crazy thing might happen.

"At the end of this series," Ruff said, "there will definitely be something to talk about."

If Sabres forward Nathan Gerbe, who is listed at a mere 5-5, is not the NHL's smallest player, he is certainly in the conversation.

And it seemed like a trivial gesture, last Friday in Buffalo, when Dan Carcillo patted Gerbe on the head as if to say "hey there, little fella." But that was just minutes before Gerbe went on to score twice as the Sabres completed a comeback against the Flyers in Game No. 81 of the regular season.

Carcillo said yesterday he didn't "understand why patting someone on the head would spark them," but then again, he doesn't understand what it's like to be undersized. Gerbe said he was not offended by the gesture, even though it irked Ruff.

"I've heard it since Day 1 in my life," Gerbe said. "I've lived it. I've rolled with it. I know it's something you have to just go with. I'm a small player, you can't be surprised."

Gerbe said he didn't put much stock into a potential retaliation against Carcillo this series.

"You've got to remember that the team is a lot bigger than any individual player," Gerbe said. "I don't really care about getting Carcillo back, I'd rather win the game for this team. We know what kind of player he is, so we're better off just letting him be.

"There are a lot of small players in the league. I'm no different than anyone else."

Maybe the mayors are trying to go healthy.

This time, there was no traditional wager of city staples - like Buffalo wings and Philly cheesesteaks - between Buffalo's Byron W. Brown and Michael Nutter.

Instead, according to the Buffalo News, Nutter has agreed to wear a Sabres hat while performing community service in Philly if Buffalo wins and Brown has agreed to serve lunch to senior citizens in Buffalo at the Salvation Army in a Flyers hat if they triumph.

We're all for helping out the community . . . but that's the best they could come up with?

The Flyers did not leave it to a game-time decision last night as they had once planned, confirming a Daily News report yesterday after the team's morning skate that defenseman Chris Pronger would not be available.

Pronger's status for tomorrow's Game 2 is unknown, though a lot could hinge on last night's result.