On Tuesday, March 21, the Buffalo Sabres are celebrating mental health awareness ahead of their game against the Nashville Predators at KeyBank Center.
The Sabres are partnering with #SameHere Global to host a pregame mental health panel for fans to take advantage of a special ticket offer. The panel will be held at the LECOM Harborcenter Marriot Ballroom at 6 p.m. prior to the game that night.

SameHere Global is a nonprofit organization founded by Eric Kussin five years ago to normalize society's perception of mental health and make it part of our everyday conversation. Kussin, a rising sports business executive who had his career cut short by a debilitating mental health crisis, has now turned his attention to mental health advocacy.
His message is simple: that everyone is impacted by life's daily stresses and traumas. The cumulative effect takes its toll over time.
"When you get to the farther end of the spectrum where your mental health starts to decline, what starts to happen with our brain/body connection and circuitry is, it starts to feel like we're alone and on an island," Kussin said. "Our reward centers start to dampen. We feel disconnected from others. Because of that, we think we're the only one suffering.
Kussin strongly believes in the importance of being open and accepting of those who need help, because everyone is fighting their own unique internal battles.
Through this partnership between the Sabres and #SameHere, fans can participate in a pregame panel: "A Conversation for Us All."
"I appreciate teams like the Sabres, where they understand the bigger picture that what we're doing is we're attempting to educate a market on how this topic can wrap its arm around all of us," Kussin said. "The team is the conduit to the educational change that needs to take place."
Click here to purchase tickets for the event and you can follow join in on the fight against the stigma of mental health by following #SameHere on Twitter at

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Fans who purchase tickets with this unique offer will have access to listen to the panel discussion as well as the chance to take a postgame photo at center ice with a Sabres personality. Faceoff against the Predators is set for 7 p.m.
The panel also includes:
According to Johns Hopkins University, an estimated 26 percent of Americans ages 18 and older suffers from a diagnosable mental disorder each year. Kussin is focused on changing the narrative by opening the discussion up to everyone - whether they have a disorder or not - as he believes everyone on the planet is dealing with mental health challenges.
"When you see people sitting together and championing mental health, the flipside is to say, 'I'm a strong individual because I'm able to open up and ask for help,'" he said. "My story is going to be someone else's lifeline down the road because of what I learned from the battle that I'm fighting."