VIDEO: Sabres announcer with St. Catharines, Niagara Falls ties honoured tonight

It was a goal call Buffalo Sabres fans will never forget. In the same sense, they’ll never forget the man who made the call.

Rick Jeanneret, born in St. Catharines and play-by-play announcer for the Niagara Falls Flyers in the 1960s, is synonymous with the NHL squad, having been their game caller for the past 51 years.

That means he’s been calling their games for every season of their existence except their inaugural 1970-71 starting point when they joined the NHL with the Vancouver Canucks.

While his retirement has been rumoured every single season for the past decade or longer, Jeanneret has refused to exit the announcer’s booth at first the old Buffalo Aud (their original arena) and now at the Key Bank Center.

However, aside from calling the Niagara Falls Flyers games in the 1960s, he further established himself as an icon in the tourist city as a popular early-morning disc jockey at the now-defunct CJRN-AM radio station from 1984 to 1992. And, of course, he’s been a Niagara Falls resident since those days, crossing the border to do the Sabres games.

Tonight, less than one month before his final play-by-play for the Sabres on April 29, Jeanneret will see his his name hung in the rafters, alongside the team’s legendary players during a pre game ceremony at Key Bank Center.

The ceremony will start at 6:40 pm, just 20 minutes before he makes his way up to the booth to call tonight’s Buffalo-Nashville game.

At the beginning of this NHL season, Rick Jeanneret announced it would be his last.

Certainly, Jeanneret has been part of the Niagara Falls scene for as long as Mayor Jim Diodati, who was looking forward to tonight’s ceremony.

“A big night with the Buffalo Sabres for our local and loved celebrity, Rick Jeanneret,” said Diodati. “Thank you for your 51 years of play-by-plays.”

Jeanneret was inducted into the Sabres Hall of Fame in 2011, the Greater Buffalo Sports Hall of Fame in 2012 and was also given the Foster Hewitt Memorial Award and was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in November of 2012.

As for that call mentioned at the beginning of the story? That would be when Sabre Brad May’s series-clinching goal in overtime of Game 4 of the 1993 Adams Division Semifinals, recently voted by Buffalo Sabres fans as Jeanneret’s greatest call.

When May undressed Boston’s Ray Bourque and hung on long enough to outwait and slide it past goalie Andy Moog, Jeanneret just started yelling “May day! May day!” over and over.

Here you’ll see Sabres from that time and after remember the goal – and the call of that same goal.