ROCHESTER, N.Y. (AP) – The Buffalo Sabres will play a regular-season NHL game at Rochester on Nov. 12 as part of a strategy to boost their regional appeal.

The Sabres, whose top farm team is the AHL Rochester Americans, announced Wednesday they will shift what would have been a home game against the Stanley Cup champion New Jersey Devils to Blue Cross Arena, 75 miles east of Buffalo.

It marks the first time the Sabres will play a regular-season game at Rochester, and the first time they’ve played a home game outside of Buffalo since facing Pittsburgh at Sacramento, Calif., in 1993, when the NHL had teams play occasional neutral site contests.

The game at Rochester is part of new Sabres owner B. Thomas Golisano’s bid to expand the geographic market of a financially struggling franchise, which he rescued from bankruptcy last season.

“It should be good for the Sabres, good for the Rochester Americans and good for all of hockey in western New York,” said Golisano, a Rochester native. “One of my goals when purchasing the Sabres was to make this a regional team for all of western New York and southern Ontario.”

Rochester is the hometown of a player on each team, Devils right wing Brian Gionta and Sabres defenseman Rory Fitzpatrick.

“I haven’t stopped smiling since I heard about it,” Fitzpatrick said.

The Sabres also will play preseason exhibition games at Rochester and Binghamton, as well as in St. Catharines and Kitchener, Ontario.

Six days of Buffalo’s training camp (Sept. 15-20) will also be at Rochester’s ESL Sports Center.

Regionalization has worked for the NFL’s Buffalo Bills, who report that 20-25 percent of their ticket sales are from the Rochester area.

“It’s very important for a community like Buffalo to regionalize,” said Sabres general manager Darcy Regier. “This contributes to a lot of other things, like working together with the Rochester Amerks.”

To get league approval to move the game, Golisano said the boards around the ice had to be changed, as well as netting added behind the goals. “I’m not sure who’s paying for that, but the cost is not consequential,” the billionaire businessman said.

Blue Cross Arena has had immovable seamless glass dasher boards, a type banned by the NHL because of safety issues.

The Sabres also unveiled their regular season schedule, which has them opening Oct. 9 at Philadelphia. Buffalo’s home-opener follows two days later against the New York Islanders.

The team also announced that its Friday home games will start an hour later, at 8 p.m., to allow fans more time to patronize area restaurants.

The schedule will feature a six-game road trip, the longest in the team’s history, which opens Oct. 16 at Edmonton and wraps up Oct. 26 at Colorado. The Sabres longest homestand will last four games, opening Dec. 4 against Phoenix and closing Dec. 12 with the New York Rangers.

The Sabres’ busiest month will be January, when they’re scheduled to play 16 games.

Buffalo will also host its traditional New Year’s Eve game, this time against Washington.

AP-ES-07-16-03 1713EDT