Top Wins of the Decade: Number Four
Tuesday, January 5th, 2010 11:47 pm by mrenninger
NUMBER FOUR
May 30, 2006
Buffalo, New York
Game 6, Eastern Conference Finals
Buffalo Sabres 2
Carolina Hurricanes 1 (ot)
About thirty seconds after the game winning goal was scored, after the high-fiving, hugging and screaming had reached its apex at my local bar, a frustrating reality struck one of my friends:
“That should have won us the series!”
He was of course, correct. The Sabres had held a 3-1 lead in the second period of the pivotal game five in Carolina (a game where- I kid you not- you could walk up to the RBC Center ticket office an hour before puck drop and buy a pair of tickets) before allowing the Hurricanes to tie it in the second period and win the game in overtime, heading to Buffalo with the 3 games to 2 lead the Sabres had in their grasp. But despite that disappointment, the Sabres would come back home to give their fans one final thrill in their final victory of the storied 2005-2006 season.
The story is pretty well known by now. Following the game five loss in Raleigh, coach Lindy Ruff left his cell phone behind in the hotel room and would depart for Buffalo without it. Upon receiving a call from the hotel offering to mail it back to him, Ruff replied something along the lines of “don’t worry, we’ll be back on Thursday” (the presumptive day of game seven). By this time the buzz around Western New York was electric, the birth of the car flag craze, the storefronts and signs normally reserved for advertisements now bearing messages wishing the Sabres well on their improbable run to the Stanley Cup Finals. Sure, we trailed 3-2 and sure, Carolina had previously won all four of the Game 6’s they had played while in that position, but aside from feeling that there was still some magic left in the tank, there was a prevailing notion that had evolved over the series that Carolina just wasn’t that good. Looking through the brackets that year during the Ottawa series I could only hope we would draw the Hurricanes instead of the Devils, and while Cam Ward had been impressive in the playoffs following his replacing original starter Martin Gerber, I just couldn’t buy into the fact that this guy was capable of winning a series against the Sabres offense, and following game six, I was sure of it.
Dumont celebrating his first period goal
The Sabres began the game looking like they had soaked in the electric atmosphere at home as well, opening the scoring less than five minutes into the game on a goal by Game 3 hero J.P. Dumont, leading most to believe that both teams were headed for a high scoring affair. Prevailing wisdom assumed it would have to be for the Sabres to win, already playing without Tallinder and Kalinin, giving Doug Janik his first career NHL start and sending Rory Fitzpatrick out for over twenty-five minutes of ice time. The shotty defense was supposed to be shored up by the return of Teppo Numminen, who had missed the previous four games with a groin injury, but after four minutes of ice time in the first period, the crafty vet who I had first encountered while playing NHL ‘93 for Super Nintendo would be relegated to the bench. However, the defense, like a raft made out of stitched together boxer shorts, held together for the next fifty minutes while Miller made many of what would be a twenty-five save outing by nights end.
By this point of the series, a team that had previously stirred up as much emotion as a roll of paper towels had garnered the hatred of every Sabres fan in the country. Whether it was their “fan base’s” obvious apathy about the Hurricanes making a stanley cup finals run, or their complaints about Buffalo tailgaters in Raleigh being too rowdy and ruining the “family atmosphere” of the games, or simply how easy it was to make a joke about NASCAR, Larry the Cable Guy or guys with mustaches in wife beater’s coming from their trailer in a torn Eric Staal jersey to take their seventeen-year-old to his 3rd grade class…okay you get my point. It was an issue of who deserved it more, it was personal in Buffalo, it was passive in Carolina. And when Bret Hedican scored off a Dumont miscue with less than four minutes left to tie it at one, there was a sense that all the air had been sucked out of the arena, as well as the Tonawanda bar I found myself in. Here we go again, was all one could think as we headed to overtime for the second consecutive game and third of the series, sitting through those nerve-wracking, insufferable full-length overtime intermissions where fans could talk about whatever it is they spent every moment of game action not talking about. For many, I suspect it was simply bartering with whatever higher power they may or may not have believed in, begging for that wild playoff run to continue, like a junkie asking for one more fix.
It was probably the biggest fluke goal in team history, not in terms of how unexpected it was, but of what it meant for the team. Briere wristed it on net a little over four minutes into overtime, a seemingly simple glove save for Ward. But it caught the top of his glove and flipped up into the air for the proverbial slow-motion moment where the arena goes quiet. Ward flailed an arm behind him, falling backwards in a last ditch attempt to save it, but it had already crossed the goal line, giving the Sabres their fifth overtime win of those playoffs and keeping the fix going for a couple more magical days, days where yes, the impossible was going to happen.