Sabres fans have real beefs with all of the above, even if I couldn't tell you what the problem was with Esposito. All I can tell you is that even when Espo stood rinkside at the Aud and tried to congratulate Wayne Gretzky for breaking his goal-scoring record in 1983, he was heckled by 16,433.

But does Satan deserve the cat calls? Of course not. It's enough for him to have to listen to Ingrid sing in the shower. Nor does he deserve the cheap shot delivered by Rob Ray with 1.4 seconds left in the third period of the Sabres' 6-4 win over the Islanders and Satan on the ice for a faceoff in the Buffalo zone.

To paraphrase, Ray said it would be a great time for Satan to score one of his "meaningless" goals. I've actually come to like Ray quite a bit in his role on the Sabres' MSG broadcast team, but until last night that role didn't mirror his playing days and include slew-foots, something Ray was pretty good at.

I didn't know there was such a thing as a meaningless goal, but the mythical beast has attached itself to Satan. For that you can probably thank Brian Blessing and Mike Robitaille, Ray's current sparring partner (although I think people exaggerate the tension on the set), who started the urban legend on "Hockey Hotline" that Satan became a maniac, a mad man, a Banshee as it were, when the opposing net was empty. To hear them talk, Satan would run over his own grandmother, 106 years old and wheelchair-bound living penniless in the Slovakian countryside, to drive one into the yawning cage.

He would and he did. Satan got his share of cheapies, three in 2001-02 alone, second in the league that year, but so what? Empty-net goals are far from meaningless. There are few bigger times to score a goal. They are a function of being on a good team that can take and hold a lead. And of having earned the trust of your coach to be on the ice in that situation, so why not grab your justly deserved spoils? Thomas Vanek is near the top of the league in empty-net goals this season, with three. Should we discard them like your still-empty medallion album?

The other book on Satan, now 32 and married to the aforementioned Ingrid Smolinska, is that he scored a bunch of goals when games were no longer in doubt. It's a curious claim. How many times did the Sabres rout opponents during Satan's days? It didn't happen a lot, I'm guessing. I have no idea if the trend holds, but during Satan's best season, when he scored 40 goals, in 1998-99 — you know, the last year the team went to the finals — the Sabres won only four games in routs, defined as a winning margin of four goals or more.

Enough. Please.

Whatever problems fans (and former teammates) have with Satan — let's make that "some" fans, because 18,690 people didn't boo him last night — the guy was the only legitimate sniper on a very offensively challenged team. In a grinding era, under a defensive-minded coach, he was the Sabres' leading goal-scorer five times in his seven full seasons, scoring 224 times in the regular season. No matter when they went in, on those teams, each one was worth its weight in gold.

Can you imagine how many more games the Sabres would have lost 2-1 had Satan not been stolen from Edmonton in 1997, GM John Muckler sending Barrie Moore and Craig Millar out west for the little devil? Can you imagine how much more boring the games would have been without one of the few Sabres who seemed to understand that the sport was supposed to be fun?

His goal celebrations were a bit over the top for hockey, and maybe that made him some enemies. Even the pantomine of taking a phone call, at a time when he was rumored to be on the trading block, was as hilarious as it was maddening. When I think back to those days, I see Hasek attempting to fellate himself while stoning Eric Lindros and Satan dropping his glove on the ice after a goal and beating the fire out of it with his stick. Good times.

And, although you never heard anyone say it much, Satan was one of those prototypical nice guys who just happen to play professional hockey. A friend of mine and his pal, a goaltender, were waiting to go onto the ice for a practice at the Pepsi Center in March 2000. Satan was the last Sabre left out there, and when he saw the guys, he waved them onto the ice. For 15 minutes, my friend fed Satan passes for one-timers — real ones, too — on the goalie, who had to be shaking. Afterwards, my friend and Satan even spoke for a few minutes in Polish and Slovakian, almost identical languages. Satan was mired in a 13-game scoring slump, and they joked that if he scored in his next game, they would have to practice together again. Satan scored twice.

It's a memory that lasted in my friend's mind, and mine, but certainly Satan has forgotten. Memory is like that. We forget that Satan was a godsend and goddamned good hockey player. And penalty killer. Lindy Ruff made sure of that. In doing so, how many goals did Satan help prevent? Were they meaningless too? The Sabres were often in the top 10 in penalty killing during Satan's time. Of course it helped to have one Dominik Hasek as your best penalty-killer, but Satan played a big role, too, scoring 15 shorthanded goals over the years.

Sure, he was and is a flawed hockey player. He has scored 60 goals the last two seasons combined on the Island — not bad — but one annoying habit did follow him east. In the biggest game of the season for the playoff-sniffing Islanders under Ted Nolan, Satan pulled off his biggest trick — convincing people again that he doesn't exist. (The Satan references just don't get old, do they?) With the season on the line, Satan conjured up one forgettable shot on goal and finished minus-2.

The guy does tend to disappear when it counts.

Islander fans probably won't be finding this out for themselves in the near future, but Satan is no playoff performer, his tap-in in Ottawa in 1999 his only postseason overtime goal (heck, he scored just two in the regular season in his Sabre career). He scored all of 13 times in 51 Stanley Cup playoff games, far off his regular-season pace. When the goals were desperately needed come springtime (overtimes at home against Washington, Dallas and Pittsburgh jump immediately to mind), his stick fired blanks.

In 2003-04, predictably, Satan played his way out of town. He scored 29 goals, but he was a minus-15 and no longer fit into the team's post-lockout plans when the summer of 2005 rolled around. A talented slacker had no place here, although he might feel right at home on a team that is as fickle and streaky as he ever was. Satan was an unrestricted free agent and signed with the Islanders, where, surprise, he has become one of the whipping boys on a team that is on the verge of missing the playoffs again.

I can't join the Fishstick fans. I'm sorry. Or the boo-birds at HSBC Arena. In the end, for me, the presence of Satan and Esposito in the Buffalo Hate Club falls into the same category, along with Kozlov's absence, actually: a mystery.