Hasek, Sabres Leave Stars Feeling Flat

He battled through 75 minutes and 30 seconds of tense, grueling hockey, but Dominik Hasek was immune to the heat applied by the Dallas Stars.

Only the heat that filled Reunion Arena finally felled him, and even then, he held out until he saw Jason Woolley’s shot from the high slot enter the net to give the Buffalo Sabres an improbable 3-2 overtime victory Tuesday at Reunion Arena in the opener of the Stanley Cup finals.

As elation, exhaustion and dehydration hit him, the Czech goaltender fell forward in as ungraceful a belly-flop as he has ever performed. But after stopping 35 shots--the last seven in overtime, including two dangerous chances by pesky winger Pat Verbeek--Hasek earned the right to flip and flop as much as he wanted.

“It was a nice release,” Hasek said of his face-first plunge. “I felt so tired. I tried to go to celebrate with my teammates but I was too tired. This building is so hot.”

The Sabres, however, were even hotter.

“The good thing is now we can’t get swept, anyways,” Coach Lindy Ruff said, tongue firmly in cheek. “We eliminated that possibility.

“The East has been swept [in the finals] the last three years and we just won one for the East.”

They won in remarkable fashion, ignoring the cheers of 17,001 raucous fans to improve their road record in the playoffs to 6-3.

They scored twice in the third period to erase a 1-0 lead Dallas had nursed for 38 minutes, endured the disappointment of seeing Jere Lehtinen tie the game with 49 seconds left in regulation after Sabre center Michael Peca lost the puck and his stick behind the net, and found the resilience and energy to kill two penalties in overtime--the ninth and 10th Dallas power plays--before once again victimizing the NHL’s best regular-season defensive team.

“Maybe our lack of experience accounts for the fact we weren’t demoralized. We didn’t know we weren’t supposed to win,” Buffalo defenseman James Patrick said. “It’s just been the state of mind of this team throughout the playoffs, and it helped us in that situation.”

It should never have happened, at least not that way. “Obviously, we’re going to have to find some ways to control the tempo of the game for 60 minutes, rather than 45 or 50,” Dallas Coach Ken Hitchcock said.

The Sabres, unaccustomed to the Texas heat and humidity and playing for the first time since they finished off Toronto in the Eastern Conference finals May 31, gained strength as the game went on. The veteran Stars, who are used to pacing themselves and playing near-flawless defense, failed on both counts. They figured Brett Hull’s goal at 10:17 of the first period, a hard shot from about 15 feet out that squeezed between Hasek’s legs, would hold up.

And they had every reason to believe that would be so, because the Sabres managed only nine shots through the first two periods. Dallas outshot Buffalo, 37-24.

“We had some good chances but we missed the net a couple of times,” Star center Guy Carbonneau said. “I think we just sat back a little too much in the third. We got caught looking instead of acting, and it cost us.”

Hull’s goal stood until Stu Barnes took a pass from Joe Juneau and lifted a wrist shot over Ed Belfour at 8:33 of the third period. Wayne Primeau, who missed the last two games of Buffalo’s Eastern final series against Toronto because of a knee injury, put the Sabres ahead with 6:23 to play when he fought off the clutches of Dallas defenseman Craig Ludwig and jabbed a rebound past Belfour during a power play Buffalo had gained when Star defenseman Darryl Sydor was sent off for tripping.

But when Lehtinen tied it, after Mike Modano took advantage of Peca’s gaffe and threw the puck into the slot, that was the Sabres’ cue to fade out gracefully and yield to the bigger and heavily favored Stars. They declined to oblige.

“It doesn’t matter what people think of us,” Juneau said. “It just matters what we think of ourselves.”

Woolley, who was a member of the Florida Panthers in 1996 when they were swept by Colorado in the Cup finals, thought overtime was a good time for him to redeem himself for what he considered a mediocre performance.

“I didn’t get much chance to do anything the whole game,” he said. “They did a real good job of shutting down the middle. I had just come off the bench, so I think I snuck up on them a little bit.”

He darted into position to take a pass off the boards from Curtis Brown, skate in unmolested and rifle a shot past Belfour. “In overtime, you just want to shoot,” he said. “I got lucky.”

The Sabres got lucky because they were good, although they figure they can play better Thursday, when the series resumes at Reunion Arena.

“I expect us to be a lot more disciplined,” winger Dixon Ward said. “I don’t expect us to take 12 penalties.”

Said Hasek: “I didn’t think they had any really big chances. They had a couple of good shots. . . . I think I played well.”

The Stars know they didn’t play nearly well enough. “Hasek played good, but I think the difference was we weren’t getting second and third chances,” winger Jamie Langenbrunner said. “We expected this to be tough, and it was.”

WOOLLEY IS WRITE ON: Jason Woolley, who scored game winner, has thought of the Stanley Cup finals for two months. Page 7