RALEIGH, N.C. -- With all being fair in love, war and the Stanley Cup playoffs, the Carolina Hurricanes certainly weren't about to make any apologies for taking advantage of a defenseless opponent.
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| Aaron Ward and Mike Grier take the traditional handshake after the tough series. (Getty Images) |
"You have to give kudos to their defensive corps tonight," said Carolina right winger Justin Williams, who scored a goal and picked up two assists to lead his club to a Stanley Cup Finals date with the Edmonton Oilers. "They played with a lot of adrenaline and really battled well."
But with Jay McKee joining Henrik Tallinder, Dmitri Kalinin and Teppo Numminen on the sidelines for the deciding game, it just wasn't enough to extend what has been a brilliant season for one of the NHL's most surprising teams.
"I've never seen anything like this having that many of your defensemen out of the lineup, but it's not an excuse, we battled through it," said Buffalo captain Daniel Briere. "The guys who came in the lineup did a great job and it's not because of them we lost the game, but emotionally, you know sometimes it's draining.
"Maybe we might have been able to get over it earlier in the series, because on the ice I don't think it changed much in our game plan. But I think emotionally it got to us."
Not that the Hurricanes were lacking issues of their own to deal with, mind you. Carolina turned in a poor overall effort when it had a chance to close things out two nights earlier and in many ways, had seen the momentum in the series shift to the undermanned Sabres. But feeding off the energy enveloping their building, the Hurricanes controlled the tempo of the game and for much of the night, kept the Sabres pinned back in their own end.
"That's what we needed to do to win," said Williams. "We needed to get pucks deep and try and take advantage of that because they had a lot of guys playing a lot of minutes back there.
"The more you make them turn, the more tired they get and that's an advantage for us."
Neither team had much of an edge in a very fast-paced first period that saw Carolina take a 1-0 lead into the dressing room. The irony was that Buffalo had the better chances despite being out-shot, but it was the Hurricanes who drew first blood after Williams did some grunt work behind the Sabres goal to strip defenseman Rory Fitzpatrick of the puck.
Williams tapped it over to Doug Weight who fed Mike Commodore at the point, and the defenseman with the Ronald McDonald hair got off a shot that changed directions twice by hitting the skates of Sabres forwards Taylor Pyatt and Adam Mair to beat goalie Ryan Miller.
Carolina looked even better in the second period, keeping the visitors pinned deep and preventing them from getting their first shot until nearly nine minutes had gone. But, the resilient Sabres scored when Doug Janik, one of the team's replacement defensemen, tied the game with a wicked shot from the point at 15:50 while the teams were playing four-on-four.
Buffalo started applying more pressure and caught a break of their own when Jochen Hecht came out from behind the Carolina goal and caromed off goalie Cam Ward to put his team ahead with only five seconds remaining in the second. But it wasn't enough to turn the tide.
"I felt like we were pressuring pretty, but we couldn't get that second goal," Hurricanes coach Peter Laviolette said. "At times, you start to wonder, are they going to come down and score and tie it up?
"Not only do they score one, but two. It was tough to swallow."
It just wasn't enough to turn the tide.
"Somebody in the dressing room said those two goals were not going to beat us," said captain Rod Brind'Amour. "We're not going to lose because of goals like that and we came out and played hard and got a goal right away that took the pressure off us."
The equalizer came at 1:34 courtesy of Weight, who was in the penalty box when the winning goal was scored in overtime of Game 6 and vowed afterward to make amends in the showdown. Again Fitzpatrick, generally the Sabres sixth defenseman during the season, was victimized behind the net, this time by Ray Whitney who stripped the puck away from him and fed Weight in front.
Ten minutes later Brind'Amour pounced on a loose puck while Brian Campbell, Buffalo's biggest minute-muncher on the blue line, was serving a delay of game penalty for accidentally flipping the puck over the glass on a clearing attempt. Williams rounded out the scoring in the final minute of play when he picked up his own rebound and flipped it over a desperate Miller, but for all intents and purposes the game was over by then.
"It was an unfortunate penalty, but I said the game would probably be decided by special teams and at the end of the day, they got the job done," Buffalo coach Lindy Ruff said about the game-winner. "But these guys can hold their heads up and feel good about they way played, battled and faced adversity.
"Those guys never made excuses and gave it everything they had. It's a special group in there."
So are the Hurricanes.
