On April Fool’s Day, let’s remember that time the Buffalo Sabres drafted a center by the name of Taro Tsujimoto. He didn’t even exist.
It’s a tradition on April Fool’s Day (April 1) to pull a prank on someone or give them a good joke. No matter how epic your prank or joke is, it will never top what the Buffalo Sabres did to the NHL during the 1974 NHL Amateur Draft. They drafted a center named Taro Tsujimoto despite knowing he didn’t even exist.
Some backstory is required for this one. Back in 1974, the draft process was excruciatingly slow and tedious. It was done via the telephone in order to keep the picks secret from the growing World Hockey Association. A lot of general managers were annoyed by the process, but they didn’t know what to do about it. Punch Imlach, the Sabres general manager at the time, got a crazy idea.
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To protest just how silly and slow the process was, he decided to make a statement by selecting a player with a made up name. Imlach enlisted the help of then Sabres public relations director Paul Wieland to create a “fake” player.
Wieland decided the player should be of Asian decent because he had the perfect name. Back in college, he frequently drove past a store named “Tsujimoto’s”. Wieland gave the store a call and asked the owner named Joshua Tsujimoto if he could use his family name and asked for some common Japanese first names.
Though Joshua didn’t wind up helping, the Sabres went ahead with their plan. In the 11th round of the 1974 draft, they drafted Taro Tsujimoto, a center from the Tokyo Katanas of the Japanese Hockey League. “Katanas” is close to “Sabres”.
Tokyo didn’t even have a hockey team until 1984. Ironically, Kokudo, the team who moved there, wound up providing the NHL with its first Japanese player in Yutaka Fukufji.
Imlach refused to address the pick until just before training camp. Technically, Tsujimoto is listed by the NHL as an “invalid pick”. However, fans went along with the joke and the Sabres embraced it as well.
Whenever games would get one-sided, fans would playfully chant “We Want Toro!”. Panini America gave Tsujimoto his own card. On the front was an unknown Asian player playing with colors similar to the Sabres’ blue and gold.
The NHL wasn’t too happy about the joke Buffalo pulled. However, the Sabres pulled a fast one on the league and likely helped get rid of the incredibly tedious draft process.