Be careful what you wish for.
That axiom has a lot of common sense attached to it, but the Buffalo Sabres had no choice but to wish for a seventh game of the Eastern Conference Finals. Any other scenario resulted in the end of the line for Buffalo.
"Yeah, before the game that's all we were looking for," Daniel Brier said after scoring a power-play goal in overtime to lead the Sabres to a 2-1 win in Game 6 and force a seventh game Thursday night (7:30 p.m. ET, OLN, TSN, RDS). "We wanted a chance at Game 7. It's exciting to get it done here in front of our fans. We have won over there, now we know we can win in Carolina. We're excited about going back for Game 7."
With Doug Weight in the penalty box for boarding Jason Pominville, a call the Canes vehemently protested, Briere got the puck at the left circle and put a shot on net that was stopped by Carolina goalie Cam Ward. The rebound jumped into the air and landed behind Ward, bouncing into the net at 4:22 of overtime.
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Messier time for Sabres
Sabres coach Lindy Ruff was looking for heroes heading into Game 6 of the Eastern Conference Finals and the seed he planted with Daniel Briere bore heroic fruit.
"Talking to Danny, I said, it's the time of the year where guys have to step up and actually used the line, 'It's Mark Messier time.'
"(I) just said, "It's the time of year where you can make a difference," and we as a team may lose, but we need the individual guys to make a difference in the game."
-- Phil Coffey
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"We had a couple of guys in front of the net, they had a couple of guys diving in front of it, so I knew if the shot could just get to Ward," Briere said. "If we're able to get the puck past them, past their defensemen, and onto Ward, a lot of times we have a guy behind their defensemen. Early in the game a couple of times, we got a shot where Derek Roy just was at the tip of his stick.
"You know, we have to find ways, our power play, and the point shots coming from the point, to get it past their defensemen, because they come out, they challenge us," Briere said. "They want to block shots. You get past them our guys in front of the net might be alone in front of Ward.
"I saw the light go on," Briere said. "I saw the fans kind of jumping up. I couldn't see much from the blue line. I mean, it's a heck of a feeling when you see everybody getting up in the building and the building's going nuts like that."
The Sabres battled back from a fair measure of adversity in this one. Defenseman Teppo Numminen dressed for the game, but his hip flexor injury acted up again and he played a little over four minutes in the game, leaving quite a burden on the remaining defensemen. The Sabres also saw their 1-0 lead, grabbed early in the first period, disappear at 16:07 of the third period. The Sabres were on their heels in the waning moments of the game, with Buffalo players exhausted at the end of regulation.
"They tied the game, it wasn't a big deal," Briere said. "In the room before overtime the guys were relaxed. We played so well that we knew we were going to get a bounce for some reason, it's just that -- I don't know how to explain it. I wasn't even nervous going back for overtime. I knew we were going to find a way to get it done."
"That's kind have been our MO all year, just a fearless bunch of guys, you know, injuries we have gone through, how many games we have won in the last 10 minutes all year," Chris Drury said. "We always just seem to, like Danny said, find a way."
"This is a great effort tonight," goalie Ryan Miller said. "I think everybody had the right attitude tonight. They were all going to go out and try their hardest, and I think we're capable of great things when we're moving our feet. We started right from the drop of the faceoff. I could feel it sitting back there watching the guys in the first period, watching them go, and I thought tonight could turn out to even more of a spread, you know, we had great chances. I think if we put those pucks on the net in Game 7, we are going to have a good chance of getting out of there with a win."
And now the Sabres have their Game 7, and make no mistake about it, Game 7 is something they have wished for.
"It's going to be fun," coach Lindy Ruff said. "The focus is let's have fun with it. We have been in, I don't know, 10 of our last 11 games have been one-goal games, something like that, you know, stress level has been high every game. Every game has been tight and these guys just keep pushing through. I think we have been four out of five or five out of six overtime games now. It just tells you the effort. I said it, I think I said it yesterday, was you can stand back there and know you are going to get the effort, which is pretty special."
