The bat wasn't the only strange thing about that game. It was unusually hot in Buffalo that night and the Aud didn't have air conditioning and as the game went on, a fog started to form and about 1/2 the game was played in a pretty thick fog. The Sabers won the game 5-4 in overtime.
I've seen your #1 moment over and over, and it never gets old. That was a truly unbelievable game. I wonder if there was ever another instance where the players jumped up into the stands & started fighting. Truly a classic.
The player who swatted down the bat was long-time Sabres color commentator Jim Lorentz. He won a Stanley Cup with the '70 Bruins, had 4 twenty goal seasons for Buffalo. Fortunately for Jim, he never ended up being arrested like Dave Winfield was for hitting and killing a seagull with a baseball!
Florida Panthers fan here. The fake rat tradition comes from when the 1995 captain Scott Mellanby Hit a rat against the wall with a stick after it ran into the lockers. We got a second mascot ( our first was Stanley C. Panther) in 2014 named Viktor E. Rat. His number is 96 after when we made it into the Stanley Cup Finals and it became a tradition to throw plastic rats onto the ice. Fans forgot about the tradition, but it came back in 2012 and continues to today.
Numero uno weird moment in the N.H.L. was when there happened to be the Ottawa Senators Coach's twin doppelganger sitting behind the bench,it couldn't be scripted any better