My resident Buffalonian readers — especially those who have followed the city’s beloved Sabres for as long as Becky has — will doubtless appreciate (as she did) these clips of Rick Jeanneret’s radio calls on what WGR 550 calls two of the four greatest moments in Sabres playoff history.

The first clip is from the April 24, 1993 contest that’s known simply as the “May Day” game, in which Brad May’s overtime goal gave Buffalo — playing at home — a playoff sweep of the rival Boston Bruins:

source file

The second clip is from a game that Becky has told me about countless times since we met: the April 27, 1994 quadruple-overtime win over New Jersey in Game 6, also on Buffalo’s home ice. The Sabres and Devils had essentially played two full games plus an extra 5:43 without either team scoring a goal — Dominik Hasek had 70 saves, 39 of them in overtime — before Buffalo’s Dave Hannan finally scored in the fourth overtime (a.k.a. the seventh period) to send the series to a seventh and deciding game (which, alas, the Devils won). It was a Wednesday-evening game that ultimately ended at 1:52 AM on a Thursday morning, and as Becky tells it, some folks in attendance just went out to breakfast afterward (probably after making a pilgrimage to Chippewa Street) rather than bothering to try to get any sleep before work the next day. Anyway, here’s Jeanneret’s call… you gotta love how his voice is cracking after calling a six-hour hockey game:

The clips are from Jeanneret’s CD, Roll the Highlight Film, which you can supposedly buy here. (Hat tip: Random Thoughts 101.)

For those anxious for a bit more Sabres nostalgia, click the “more…” link below to read a couple of Buffalo News articles about the 1994 game. (Thank you, Lexis-Nexis!)

HANNAN’S GOAL IN FOURTH OT FORCES GAME 7

By Bob Dicesare

Referee Terry Gregson was pointing emphatically at the puck that lay inside the New Jersey cage. The replay officials were turning off their VCRs. And Dave Hannan was on his knees sliding and pumping his arms in wild celebration of The Goal That Finally Counted.

The Buffalo Sabres are still alive. Exhausted, yes. Forever indebted to Dominik Hasek, to be sure. But still breathing and a part of National Hockey League lore after beating the New Jersey Devils, 1-0, on Hannan’s goal at 5:43 of the fourth overtime.

The sixth longest game in NHL playoff history — and the Sabres’ longest ever — ended at the Aud at 1:52 a.m. Hannan gathered a puck that had struck the skate of one defenseman and unleashed a 12-foot backhander that goaltender Martin Brodeur doubtlessly would have stopped were it within his reach.

But Brodeur was down in anticipation of a different shot. The puck was beyond the grasp of his outstretched glove. The top of the net bulged and either no one noticed or no one cared that Wayne Presley’s skate seemed to rest within the crease.

“You knew it was going to end,” Randy Wood said. “You just wondered if it would end before dawn.”

And so the Sabres are returning to The Meadowlands where, on Friday night, they will call on whatever energy remains and meet the Devils in the seventh and deciding game of their Eastern Conference quarterfinal series. The winner advances to the semifinals against the winner of the series between Boston and Montreal, also tied at three games apiece.

“We’ll take a lot of fluids and get some rest,” Hannan said. “We’re going back and we got a chance.”

Brodeur was simply sensational. He stymied the Sabres for 125 minutes and 43 seconds, making 49 saves. And yet his performance hardly compared to what Hasek accomplished at the other end. Hasek made 39 saves in overtime alone, and faced 70 shots all told. No Sabre goaltender had ever seen more than 50 shots under playoff conditions.

“Hasek played the best game I’ve ever seen a goaltender play,” Bob Carpenter said.

The Sabres concurred. There was more than one instance when a Devil fired and the Sabres swore they were cooked.

“I think we said it six or seven times,” Doug Bodger said. “Maybe more.”

Hasek was tested with far tougher shots than Brodeur following regulation. But his stop of the game — the save that brought the crowd to its feet for a prolonged standing ovation — came midway through the third period.

Bobby Holik gathered a turnover at the Buffalo blue line and went in two-on-one with Stephane Richer. Holik passed across the slot and Richer was looking at the entire left side of the net. But he might have underestimated Hasek’s reflexes and agility. Instead of going high, Richer fired knee-high. Hasek lunged across the crease, split like a gymnast and snared the puck.

“He waited for a while because the pass was not easy for him,” Hasek said. “I could make a move. He took the pass and then shot it. Fortunately it hit my left pad.

“All their best shooters are right-handed,” Hasek said. “I knew that’s a save I might have to make. I worked on it yesterday at practice.”

While Hasek was enduring the strain of a 70-shot barrage, his teammates were fighting the frustration of two goals disallowed during the second period.

Ken Sutton, fed a drop pass by Dave Hannan, snapped a 25-footer past Brodeur with 8:23 left in the period. However, Gregson waved off the goal and assessed Jason Dawe a minor for goaltender interference. Replays showed that Dawe was trying to cut off the goal when Claude Lemieux reached back with his stick and rode Dawe into Brodeur.

“I thought that’s what he did,” Dawe said.

The Sabres were deprived again with 3:18 left in the second. Brodeur made a blocker save on Dale Hawerchuk and Wayne Presley crashed in looking for a rebound. The puck glanced off Presley’s right leg, struck his left skate and carried over the goal line. Gregson signaled a goal, but was obligated to call for a replay review.

After chatting with replay officials, Gregson broke the bad news to the Sabres. No goal, again. The crowd of 15,003 responded by littering the ice, delaying play for five minutes.

Norris said that Presley had “two kicks” at the puck, one with one foot and one with the other. Wally Harris, the NHL’s assistant director of officiating, also was in the box. Harris said that a goal is disallowed when a player positions his skates in a way that indicates an attempt to direct the puck into the net.

“Honestly, I didn’t even know where the puck was until the (red) light went on,” Presley said. “They thought I kicked it into the net and I didn’t.”

The two disallowed goals loomed all the larger as the game hit a first overtime, and a second and crept on and on. A Buffalo power play in the third overtime was almost comical.

“They were just dragging,” Carpenter said.

And no wonder. Doug Bodger, for instance, had logged more than 45 minutes of time by the start of the third OT and was nearing 60 when the game concluded.

“Is that what it was?” Bodger asked. “It was a good thing we scored. I was starting to stiffen up in the seventh period there.”

The longer the game went, the more it was played in spurts. A line that appeared refreshed 10 minutes earlier would find its legs again and churn for another shift. It was such a burst of energy that enabled the line of Presley, Dawe and Hannan to strike for the goal.

Presley raced into the right corner for a dump in and outmaneuvered Bruce Driver to the puck. He chipped it five feet to Dawe along the boards and Dawe snapped a pass that was blocked. Dawe recovered the puck and made a power move on Driver down the right side.

Upon nearing the goal line, Dawe one-handed a pass toward Presley into the low slot. Brodeur, expecting a quick shot, went down. But the puck struck the skate of Valerie Zelepukin and bounced back toward the right side.

When Tommy Albelin swung and missed, Hannan gained possession on his backhand and fired.

“I didn’t see it at all,” Hannan said. “When I saw the red light go on I knew it was in there.”

“I didn’t see the goal and I didn’t even see him skate off the ice,” Dawe said. “I was too tired to skate with him.”

That this game will go down as a classic was too much for the Sabres to comprehend in their weariness.

“Talk to me about that tomorrow,” Randy Moller said.

“I’m too tired to think about it,” said Ken Sutton.

All the Sabres knew is that they had survived.

“You know,” Hannan said as he emerged from the shower at 2:45 a.m. “That game is kind of what this team has been about all season long.”

*****

HISTORICAL PERFORMANCE NO BIG THING FOR HASEK

[Ugh… HISTORIC!!! That should be “historic,” not “historical”!!! For shame, Buffalo News! -ed.]

By Larry Felser

It was 2:15 a.m. in the Sabres’ locker room and the creatures were not only stirring, they were still tingling as a result of that sports moment frozen in time when Dave Hannan’s backhander won the longest game in franchise history.

There was one exception: Dominik Hasek.

When Hasek came out of the shower, he looked as if he had done nothing more strenuous than work a crossword puzzle. What he had actually done was perform more nobly in one game than any Sabre goaltender before him.

This was not just one game, however. It was two games and change, with the team going eyeball to eyeball with elimination. By the time they added it up, the goalie had made 70 saves and had the crowd chanting “Hasek! Hasek!” at a time when the only sound normally heard in the Aud is made by the sweepers.

He stonewalled Scott Stevens. He stonewalled Claude Lemieux and Stephane Richer. He committed larceny upon Viacheslav Fetisov and Valeri Zelepukin, Tom Chorske and John MacLean. Go down the New Jersey roster and you won’t find a man Hasek didn’t frustrate during his six-hour, 20-minute odyssey.

At the beginning of the fourth overtime, long after Letterman and Leno had signed off, Bill Guerin swooped around the Buffalo net and headed for a wrap-around goal that would end the series and Buffalo’s season. Hasek stopped it . . . with his elbow.

Afterwards, when most Sabre fans were home in bed dreaming of Stanley Cup parades, Hasek shrugged off his performance as, well, nothing that special.

“The shots in overtime are not so hard,” he theorized. “They don’t handle the puck so good, either. So it’s easier for a goaltender.”

He didn’t think the workload was that special, either, although he admitted 70 saves was his most, by far. “I think I had about 50 in Boston one time,” he says.

Hasek hasn’t been sleeping well lately, but he says, “I slept for about three hours Wednesday afternoon and I felt good.” The Devils can confirm that the nap did him a lot of good. He had them talking to themselves long before the first overtime.

Hasek made so many great saves that he couldn’t keep track of them. “There was one in the third period,” he said. “They came on a two-on-one break and the guy made a good pass to somebody I don’t remember.”

“Richer!” prompted the chorus of interrogators surrounding him. It was Richer, indeed, who ripped a hard shot that had “goal” embossed on it, but Hasek turned it aside.

“If he shot right away, it might have gone in,” said the goaltender. “But he waited and when he shot, he hit my pads.”

Some in the dressing room were as matter of fact about Hasek’s performance as he was. Randy Wood, the veteran winger, played in the Islanders’ series-clinching, seven-overtime victory over Washington in which Pat LaFontaine scored the winning goal. Understandably, Kelly Hrudy’s goaltending performance in that game is special to Wood.

“I think Hrudy had about 80 saves,” he said.

John Muckler said he has seen “a lot of great goaltending” in his coaching career. Muck was part of Edmonton’s Stanley Cup dynasty so Grant Fuhr, now Hasek’s teammate, is special to him.

But 10 years from now, ask most of the Sabres and all of the crowd of 15,003, and they will probably tell you that the night that Dominik Hasek demonstrated his magic tricks long after midnight is the hockey memory they will treasure.

This game was a classic, not just a hockey classic but a Buffalo sports classic. For 125 minutes and 43 seconds, the quiet blade of a man from the Czech Republic fought off elimination for his team. The bonus is that with Hasek in goal, the Sabres know they can beat any team.

They just better make sure he has his nap tomorrow afternoon before Game Seven.

*****

A SIX-HOUR HOCKEY GAME FROM A SPECTATOR’S SEAT

By Donn Esmonde

It was approximately 1:15 a.m. Thursday when the laces on Randy Wood’s skates took on a profound importance. At least they did to me and my companion at the extended Sabres-Devils playoff hockey game.

I believe it was in the second overtime period — although it might have been the third; one lost track after a while — that my buddy noticed the Sabres’ Wood was the only player he’d ever seen with black skate laces.

In normal times, a trivial observation. After sitting for five hours watching men with sticks knock a black object around to no resolution, the fact somehow took on multiple layers of meaning, worthy of pondering at length.

Which is what happens when a hockey game that could be decided at any instant extends through half the night.

You get a little loopy, your brain rewires itself, and spectating becomes the mental equivalent of running a marathon.

Dave Hannan mercifully ended the game six-plus hours after it began. Until that moment, watching the Sabres and Devils play was like listening to an incredibly long joke with no punch line, climbing a mountain with no peak, reading a book with no ending. It seemed like the sporting version of Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot,” some existential experiment in which two teams play endlessly, in search of a conclusion that never comes.

At one point deep into the multiple overtimes, the Devils fired shot after shot at Sabres goalie Dominik Hasek while the obviously exhausted Sabres skated aimlessly, with no regard to positioning or puck. They seemed delusional, like men lost in the desert without water.

The Sabres went for what seemed like hours in overtime without getting within a $ 5 cab ride of the Devils’ net. Lengthy periods of dump-it-in, muck-it-out hockey were broken by wild, potentially game-deciding flurries. The fact that the game could end in an instant — and an awareness that something special was unfolding — kept one alert; the long, fallow stretches of life between the blue lines made the eyelids heavy.

It reminded one of sports novelist Pat Jordan’s line that hockey should be played with an enormous heavy object, with updates given on a daily basis (”It’s Thursday morning, the puck is now approaching the blue line”).

The men’s room lines during overtime intermissions stretched out the door, for obvious reasons. Nobody wanted to be the chump who sat through five hours of the most memorable contest in Sabres history and was in the john for the game-winner.

Call home to tell the spouse you’re running a little late? Forget it. Lines at the precious few pay phones stretched for 25 feet.

Thousands wandered the Aud tunnels, vacant-eyed, during the overtime intermissions, searching for one of the few open concession stands. Hordes of nicotine addicts filled the hallways with smoke.

After midnight, a team of no-nonsense matrons should have circulated through the stands to berate parents who refused to take their children home. The kid in the row with us, who was about eight, was curled up in his seat, droopy-eyed and listless, for the game’s final two hours. One didn’t know whether to fetch him a teddy bear or hook him up to an IV.

One fan joked that the injured Pat LaFontaine — who won a multiple-overtime playoff game years ago for the Islanders — would have sufficient time to heal, suit up and win this one, too.

Dave Hannan’s game-winning play took milliseconds; yet watching him skate in front of the net and seeing goalie Martin Brodeur fall to the ice and realizing there was a good chance the marathon’s end might be upon us made it seem like the players were skating in molasses.

Afterwards, fans heading down the Aud steps for waiting Metro Rail trains howled like Aborigines around a ceremonial campfire.

With good reason. This wasn’t just a game, it was an experience.