The Buffalo Sabres have deflated their fans' hopes amid another losing season -- potentially their 14th straight campaign without a playoff berth, the longest active streak in the NHL.
But the Sabres say they're not trying to deflate the palm trees that fans are bringing to games as a symbolic reaction to that futility.
"I have never seen so much unity across Sabres fans as I have with these stupid palm trees," said Rebecca Way, a Buffalo season-ticket holder. "I hate it because we are a joke, but I love it because it's funny. It brings us together."
This NHL season's most tropical controversy started Dec. 6. Buffalo general manager Kevyn Adams held a news conference to discuss the team's misfortunes, as his team is 11-14-4 after 29 games. Adams talked about the challenges Buffalo faces in attracting and retaining talent.
"You become a perennial playoff team that has a chance to win the Stanley Cup year after year, and you're on less no-trade lists. We don't have palm trees. We have taxes in New York. Those are real. Those are things you deal with," he said.
The reference to "palm trees" earned immediate attention from the media -- noting the lack of tropical foliage in first-place Winnipeg -- and among Sabres fans, who started planning how to use palm trees to express their frustration.
The first home game after the news conference, on Dec. 7, didn't have much tropicality in the stands -- although one ingenious Buffalo fan was making "balloon animal" palm trees and handing them out at the game. Way and Josh Edwards, who run the Sabres Mafia Facebook group, hoped to bring inflatable palm trees to that game, but finding them available for purchase in Buffalo proved difficult. So they ordered some online.
"The second game was when there was a lot of people with inflatable palm trees because that's when our Amazon orders came in," said Way, who said they checked the KeyBank Center website and didn't find anything that restricted bringing inflatables to the game.
After the Dec. 9 game, a 6-5 shootout loss to the Detroit Red Wings, one fan tossed their inflatable palm tree on the ice in protest.
On Wednesday night against the New York Rangers, the vibes were different at the arena. The Sabres' podcast "After The Whistle," hosted by former Buffalo players Andrew Peters and Craig Rivet, put out a message on social media telling fans to "stop bringing palm trees and wearing tropical shirts to games" because "rumor has it the Sabres brass is apparently getting upset about it."
While that was meant to be a sarcastic way to encourage more fans to turn home games into a beach party, Edwards said some took the message literally -- thinking that continuing with the palm trees and tropical-themed gear could get fans in trouble at the game.
"We had heard the rumors that management was upset. We got there and we didn't see any palm trees," he said.
Way and Edwards had one with them and waited until after the national anthem to inflate it. The tree was on the floor for most of the first period before they took it with them to the concourse between periods. They ran into a friend who warned them that the ushers had been instructed to have all inflatable palm trees deflated and put away. "He was like, 'I don't want you guys to get kicked out,'" Way said.
Sure enough, an usher back at their seats instructed them to keep the palm tree out of sight after they deflated it.
Edwards felt this was another example of the team overreacting to soft protests from fans. Over the years, he said he had seen the Sabres order fans to take down signs that called for the firing of coaches or executives.
"They're very into censorship when they don't like the message," he said. "We knew this was going to happen. We saw this coming. I don't think we saw it coming on Day 6."
On Wednesday night, Way and Edwards shared their story on social media, where it quickly went viral. Backlash against the Sabres was immediate for what many perceived as a petty reaction to fan mockery.
But Nicole Hendricks, vice president of communications & hockey administration for the Sabres, said the team is fine with inflatable palm trees at home games.
"The only policy we have, which is the same for everything, is you just can't have something that's obstructing the view of other fans," Hendricks told ESPN on Thursday. "If it is not obstructing a view of other fans, it's fine to have."
Hendricks said that while some fans deflated their palm trees Wednesday night, "There were plenty of other people" who had inflated ones at the game against the Rangers. She said the Sabres have no policy against the palm trees, leis, Hawaiian shirts or anything else the fans brought to the game to goof on Adams' comments.
"You can have anger. You can have apathy. We don't take anger for granted. I'd rather people care than not care and not show up," she said. "It's not like we're sitting here pissed off that our fans care. That would be ridiculous, to be quite honest."
Rather than being embarrassed by the fan reaction to Adams' news conference, Hendricks said the Sabres have talked about ways to "lean into" the palm tree memes.
"My dream is we turn things around, make the playoffs, and our playoff giveaway is rally towels with palm trees all over it," she said.