Buffalo Sabres April Fools: Remembering Taro Tsujimoto
On April Fool’s Day, let’s remember that time the Buffalo Sabres made a statement by drafting a player who didn’t even exist!
Usually, April Fool’s Day is a day for pulling fast ones on your friends, family, and colleagues. Unfortunately, it appears we’re actually living April Fools in 2020, as the NHL season has been postponed and could be canceled. Hopefully, this story involving the Buffalo Sabres drafting someone who didn’t exist will cheer you up.
The year was 1974. Back then, the draft was an unnecessarily long and lengthy process. . It was done over the phone because the NHL wanted to keep things secret from the WHA (World Hockey Association). Obviously, this led to the draft being extremely boring. A lot of general managers had a problem with it, but no one really wanted to say anything about it.
Sabres general manager Punch Imlach apparently had enough of it because he made a protest in a very interesting way. Imlach decided to protest the way the draft was done by drafting someone named Taro Tsujimoto.
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He got some help from Sabres public relations director Paul Wieland in creating him. Wieland came up with the name “Taro Tsujimoto”. Tsujimoto was the name of a store near Wieland back in college. He knew they were Asian, so he gave them a call and asked permission to use their name. Also, Wieland asked for common Japanese names. However, he didn’t get help.
Still, the Sabres went ahead with their plan. In the 11th round, things were getting especially slow, so Imlach decided to pull his trump card by drafting Taro Tsujimoto. They claimed he came from the Tokyo Katanas. The funny thing is, “katana” is close in Japanese to “Sabres”.
Tokyo didn’t have a hockey team at the time. Heck, they didn’t even have a hockey team until 1984. And ironically, that franchise, Kokudo, wound up providing the NHL’s first Japanese player in Yutaka Fukufji.
Imlach didn’t address the draft pick at the time. It wasn’t until training camp that he let everyone in on the prank. The NHL considered the draft pick to be “invalid”. However, Sabres fans ran with the joke and Taro Tsujimoto became a bit of a cult hero in Buffalo.
Sabres fans weren’t the only ones who rolled with the joke either. Panini America even gave Tsujimoto his own hockey card!
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Obviously, the NHL wasn’t too happy about the joke. But the Sabres made their point about the draft process loud and clear. And the league heard it, as they quickly changed the draft process to make it quicker.