This is part 3 of 3 in a series remembering the playoff run of the 2006 Buffalo Sabres. Read part 1 here and part 2 here.
Last time, our heroes got a big monkey off their back by eliminating the division champion Ottawa Senators in 5 games. Jason Pominville’s series-winning overtime goal had RJ yelling “Now do you believe?” and boy, did we ever.
The NHL playoffs were now down to the final 4, and the winner of the Eastern Conference seemed poised to claim the Cup. The best teams in the West had already been eliminated in the early rounds, leaving the 6th seed Anaheim Ducks and the 8th seed Edmonton Oilers to play for the conference championship. In the East, Buffalo would hit the road to face a team that was arguably their personal doppelganger: the Carolina Hurricanes.
The Set Up:
Like Buffalo, Carolina won 52 games in the 2006 season. Also like the Sabres, they relied on their speed and skill to do it. The Canes had the best powerplay in the NHL that season, and in the East only the Senators had scored more goals. Carolina’s defense and goaltending weren’t quite as sharp – also like the Sabres – and they looked even more like Buffalo early in the postseason when rookie Cam Ward took the starting job from Martin Gerber.
But even though the Canes had outscored the Sabres in 2006 while playing a similar style, a lot of fans didn’t take them anywhere near as seriously as they did the Sens. For one, Carolina racked up wins in the lowly Southeast division, which only produced two playoff teams that year: the Canes and the 8th seed Tampa Bay Lightning.
Also, Carolina had nearly been swept in the first round, dropping games 1 and 2 at home to the 7th seed Montreal Canadiens before sneaking out an overtime win in game 3 to get back on track. That win came after Montreal’s top center, Saku Koivu, went down with an eye injury that would keep him out for the remainder of the series. Carolina won the next 3 games, all by one goal, to survive and advance.
Sadly for us, taking advantage of opponents’ injury problems would become a pattern for the Canes. But we didn’t know that on May 20, 2006, when the Sabres headed to Raleigh and the fans tuned into the Versus channel (remember that?) for Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Finals.
Game 1:
The first period of Game 1 in Carolina continued two trends of the Sabres playoff run: Buffalo taking an early lead, and losing a defender to injury. Henrik Tallinder gave the Sabres a 1-0 lead less than 3 minutes into the game, but Teppo Numminen left the game with an injury and would not return for the rest of the series.
The Sabres had already promoted 7th defender Rory Fitzpatrick to the starting roster after Dmitri Kalinin broke his ankle versus Ottawa in Round 2. Those injuries were costly. It was a Fitzpatrick giveaway at the blueline later in the period that led to 36 year-old former Flyer Rod Brind’Amour tying the game.
In the second Buffalo retook the lead on a backhand shot from Daniel Briere that beat Ward. In the third, Carolina peppered Miller with 16 shots, but he was excellent, and Jay McKee’s goal to put the Sabres up 3-1 ultimately proved to be the winner in a 3-2 Game 1 victory.
Game 2:
For the rest of the series, the Sabres’ defensive injuries would be the main storyline. Doug Janik was the man called up to replace Numminen in Game 2. Janik hadn’t played a single game with the Sabres during the regular season and had only played in a total of 10 NHL games in his career.
Down in the series at home, Carolina had their backs against the wall and looked like the better team early. They scored first in the opening period and could have added more but Miller played well. The Sabres caught a lucky break late in the period when a shot from the point deflected off Thomas Vanek’s leg into the Carolina net to tie the game.
Instead of capitalizing on the good bounce, though, the Sabres slipped further behind in the second period. They struggled to do more than dump-and-change, recording just 4 shots on goal. This wasn’t the team we had watched all year. This time, Carolina connected on their chances, and two Ray Whitney goals put the Canes up 3-1 after 2. A Justin Williams goal in the 3rd period all but ended the game as the crowd chanted “Miller Lite” at the Sabres’ young goalie.
Two powerplay goals for Buffalo made the final score a deceptively close 4-3, but Carolina had dominated. The series was tied at 1 as it shifted to Buffalo, and the Sabres were showing big cracks in the armor. But hopefully the hometown crowd could turn it around.
Game 3:
The packed house at HSBC Arena seemed to do just that, jolting the Sabres back into their aggressive attacking style. After managing just 19 shots in Game 2, Buffalo registered 33 in Game 3.
After the first period ended tied 1-1, it was the Sabres turn to embarrass the Hurricanes’ goalie. Briere scored in the opening minutes of the second, and again midway through the period. A goal from Ales Kotalik minutes later put Buffalo up 4-1 and chased Cam Ward from the net. Martin Gerber would finish the game for Carolina, but by that point Buffalo was playing defense.
The game tightened when Cory Stillman scored his second of the night to close the gap to two at the end of the period. Late in the third, Eric Staal brought the Canes within one, but the Sabres held on to claim a 4-3 victory and a 2-1 lead in the series.
But there was bad news too: yet another injury on defense. Henrik Tallinder, who had been as good as any of Buffalo’s D-man that playoff run, broke his arm. He, too, was done for the year.
Game 4:
By now the Sabres’ defensive core barely resembled the one that had won 50+ games in the 2006 season. Gone were Dmitri Kalinin, Teppo Numminen and Henrik Tallinder. In their place were Rory Fitzpatrick, Doug Janik and Jeff Jillson. Where before the Sabres were flying around the ice with depth, speed, and puck-moving skill at nearly every position, now half of their defense was AHL-level talent. Jay McKee, Toni Lydman, and Brian Campbell all logged big minutes, but they couldn’t shield the new guys entirely.
In Game 4 they couldn’t do anything. Carolina scored twice in the first period and never looked back. Andrew Ladd’s goal early in the second put the Canes up 3-0 and they fell into a defensive shell. Buffalo only managed 22 shots all game on Martin Gerber, who got the call after relieving Ward in Game 3. Gerber stopped them all en route to a 4-0 shutout victory that thoroughly depressed Sabres fans. Jillson had been on the ice for all 3 of Carolina’s even-strength goals. It wasn’t fair. This wasn’t the Buffalo Sabres versus the Carolina Hurricanes. It was the Buff-Rochester Sabre-Americans versus the Hurricanes.
With the series tied at 2 and heading back to Carolina, we knew we needed a hero (or two) to make it to the Stanley Cup Finals.
Game 5:
Sabres fans had a lot of reasons to worry going to into Game 5, maybe even enough to feel okay if they lost. The defense was down to just 3 starters, they were on the road, Martin Gerber was hot. We didn’t feel any better when Chris Drury’s first-period goal was answered 17 seconds later by Carolina’s Justin Williams.
But then Martin Gerber turned back into the guy who had been benched in favor of a rookie. Derek Roy scored late in the first to put Buffalo up 2-1 heading into intermission, and Toni Lydman scored on a breakaway just minutes into the second to widen the lead to 3-1. For the second time in the series, the Canes switched goalies, sending Ward back into the net. It was a wakeup call for Carolina, and just in time. With the Sabres as beat-up as they were, you could sense that they needed to hold this lead. But just a few minutes after Ward took to the ice, Mark Recchi scored to cut the lead to 1 with well over half the game to play. Crap. Midway through the period, Rod Brind’Amour ripped a shot in off the post to tie it 3-3. Double crap.
The Sabres managed to keep the score tied at 3 to the end of the period. In the third, they had a bunch of chances to retake the lead, but couldn’t finish. Carolina barely mustered any offense at all when they weren’t on the powerplay, and before you knew it we were headed to overtime. The next team to score would get two chances to play for a Finals appearance. The other would have to win twice in a row to keep their season alive.
With the pressure as high as it had been all year, the Sabres couldn’t deliver. They came close as they had in the third, but the puck just wouldn’t go in the net. Eventually Carolina got a powerplay and Corey Stillman scored on a rebound to give the Hurricanes the win and a 3-2 lead in the series. For the first time all series, a team had won consecutive games, and it was the Canes.
The Sabres had no one to blame but themselves. They had gotten a better performance out of their patchwork defensive core than anyone could’ve expected, got out to a 2 goal lead, and chased the other team’s goalie. But they let it slip away, and came away with a loss in what was probably the definitive game of the series.
Game 6:
I was at this game, so I can describe firsthand the mood at HSBC Arena: fucking terrified. You couldn’t trust the team to win in such a depleted state, but you couldn’t give up on the dream either.
We got to breathe a sigh of relief early when JP Dumont scored his 7th goal of the playoffs 5 minutes into the game. But from there we went back to holding our breath, as the game stayed 1-0 through the first and second periods.
As the clock ticked down in the third, it started to look like Buffalo might just pull this out and force Game 7. But of course, Carolina tied the game on a fluky goal from the point late in the third. For Bret Hedican, it was just his 2nd goal of the playoffs. The Sabres couldn’t do anything but shake their heads in disbelief as they headed to overtime for the second time in as many games.
This was the most fun Sabres team of my life by far and their future hung on the next goal. In HSBC, those 17 minutes of intermission separating the end of regulation from the start of OT were rough. The whole season flashed through your mind. If you were a season ticket holder, you had walked into that building back in October 2005 with low expectations. This was a team that had finished last in its division before the lockout and missed the playoffs every year since Dominik Hasek left town in summer of 2001. It was a team that didn’t made big changes to get better, not wealthy enough to be a player in free agency and not bold enough to take big chances in trades. Darcy Regier and Lindy Ruff had been there almost a decade and hadn’t accomplished anything besides ride Hasek’s coattails. But over the course of that 2005-2006 year, the fans and the team had both gone through that process of realizing, hey, we’re actually pretty damn good at this. We had watched them make it back to the playoffs, beat the hated Flyers, topple their biggest adversary Ottawa, and set the tone for the league’s new post-lockout style of play. It was hard to accept that the ride might be over and it wouldn’t include the Cup. Didn’t we deserve it?
In OT, it was hard to breathe every time to puck came into the Sabres’ zone. But Buffalo caught a break when Doug Weight took an unnecessary run at Jason Pominville and was called for a penalty. On the powerplay, Daniel Briere’s high wrist shot found the back of the net in one of those plays where only fans directly behind the net knows what happened. When the building realized what happened a half-second later, it roared. The Sabres had won 2-1. It wasn’t over. We were going to Game 7.
Game 7:
When I hear the phrase “the straw the broke the camel’s back,” I always think of Jay McKee. After Game 6, McKee’s leg got infected and swelled up so badly he couldn’t play. For the Game 7 that would decide their season, the Sabres would have just 2 of the 6 defenders that they had relied upon all year. Nathan Paetsch dressed for what would turn out to be the only playoff game of his NHL career.
The first period was even, but tilted in Carolina’s favor thanks to a screen blocking Miller’s sight of a Mike Commodore shot from the point. The puck went in and the Hurricanes held the 1-0 lead through the first period. In the second period, Buffalo answered, as sub defensemen Janik scored from the point to tie the game 1-1. That was enough to believe again. Hey, in one game, anything can happen.
The score stayed tied at 1 late into the second period. In the dying second, Jochen Hecht took the puck from behind the Carolina net and backhanded it towards Cam Ward. A harmless looking play somehow snuck through and the Sabres took a 2-1 lead with 5 seconds left in the period. Injuries be damned, one intermission and twenty minutes of hockey were all that stood in the way of the Stanley Cup Finals. Needless to say, that was another rough 17 minutes.
On the other side of it was a rude awakening. Less than two minutes into the third, Doug Weight scored on a very similar play to Hecht’s goal to tie the game at 2. So much for holding on. Now we have to generate more offense and score again. If only it was that easy. Midway through the period, Brian Campbell shot the puck over the glass in the Sabres’ own end. As I noted in a previous entry in this series, 2006 was the first year that was a penalty, and Buffalo was one of the first teams to get screwed by it.
Campbell’s error was clearly unintentional, but it didn’t matter. Carolina’s deadly powerplay struck moments later when a puck lingered too long in front of the Buffalo net, allowing old man Brind’Amour to swoop in and score the go-ahead goal. With less than ten minutes left, the Sabres trailed 3-2.
From there all I remember is the slow, numbing realization that it wasn’t going to happen. The Sabres were out of miracles and out of defensemen. A championship was going to elude Buffalo again. The Canes scored an insurance goal and won 4-2. Brind’Amour’s powerplay goal was a backbreaker. The Sabres’ season was over.
In Conclusion:
As a Buffalo sports fan born too late to see the Jim Kelly Bills or the French Connection Sabres or any of the other great teams in Buffalo history, the 2005-2006 Sabres are the most fun I’ve ever had cheering for one of my teams. Even though their season ended in the Conference Finals, they were in many ways “closer” to the Cup than the 1999 team I saw lose to Dallas in the infamous No Goal game. They weren’t about one player. They were about overwhelming speed and talent and depth. And making it that much sweeter was that no one expected it, no one was ready for it. That year was the surprise ride of a lifetime.
If not for the injuries they suffered, I still believe the 2006 Sabres would have beaten the Hurricanes and gone on to beat the Edmonton Oilers to win the Stanley Cup. I guess the list of fanbases that think a certain Cup would’ve been theirs if only so-and-so had stayed healthy is pretty long, but I won’t apologize for remembering 2006 fondly. It’s the best sports have ever been for me.
Hopefully, in the era of Jack Eichel and Sam Reinhart, we’ll experience that again. If it happens, they’ll have Danny Briere and Chris Drury to thank for creating a generation of Sabres fans that hadn’t seen a product worth their time for years in the pre-lockout days but couldn’t imagine life without hockey today. Take it from a kid who was in high school at the time.
Damn, that was ten years ago?
See you next season, guys.
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