Game 3 of the 1975 Stanley Cup Finals had so many eerie things happen during it that it should have been played on Halloween.
The game between the hometown Buffalo Sabres and the Philadelphia Flyers unfolded on May 20 in Memorial Auditorium. After winning the first two games of the series, Philadelphia was looking to bury the Sabres, perhaps even sweep them.
With all the talent Buffalo had during the 1970s, they should have won the Stanley Cup at least. Unfortunately for the Sabres, both the Flyers and the Montreal Canadiens were celebrating dynasties during the period.
The Sabres, in only their fifth NHL season, were led by the famous “French Connection” line of center Gilbert Perreault, left wing Rick Martin and right wing Rene Robert. The high-scoring line, which played together from 1972 to 1979 and whose components were all French-Canadian, was named after the movie that won the 1971 Best Picture Oscar. |
Former Flyers goalie Bernie Parent won back-to-back Stanley Cups in 1973-74, 1974-75 and is one of the few NHL players to have his photo appear on the cover of “Time,” the weekly newsmagazine. |
The club also had a solid second line featuring Don Luce and Craig Ramsey, and Jerry “King Kong” Korab and Bill Hajt stood tall on the blue line.
The Sabres’ lone weakness was their goaltending. Coach Floyd Smith alternated between Roger Crozier and Gerry Desjardins, going with whoever had the hot hand.
Flyers coach Fred “The Fog” Shero, so nicknamed for his esoteric locker room speeches, had no such worries. He had best goalie in the NHL, Bernie Parent. During the Seventies, Parent won a pair of Vezina Trophies, played on two Flyers Stanley Cup-winning teams and is the only goalie to win consecutive Conn Smythe Trophies as the playoff MVP. He is also one of the few NHL players to have his photo appear on the cover of “Time,” the weekly newsmagazine.
His teammates were known as the “Broad Street Bullies” because they played a rough-and-tumble style in the Spectrum arena, on Broad Street. They were led by captain Bobby Clarke, a diabetic who required daily shots of insulin but played fearlessly nonetheless. The Flyers’ muscle was left wing Dave “The Hammer” Schultz, who in the 1974-75 season took 472 minutes in penalties. The Flyers were bolstered offensively by sharp-shooting right wing Reggie Leach.
Buffalo’s arena had no air conditioning, so the temperature in the building that mid-May day climbed well above the 80-degree mark. The resulting fog over the ice surface greatly restricted the players’ visibility. “On the ice it felt 110 degrees (F.), and inside the mask at least 130 degrees (F.),” Parent wrote in his 1975 memoir “Bernie!”
“The mist wasn’t too bad until about midway in the game . . . We had to stop the game every few minutes and have players from both teams skate around trying to circulate the air . . . Buffalo’s solution to clearing the fog in the next game was to bring out some kids waving white sheets . . . The whole thing was a shame and looked bad for the league.”
The game was interrupted seven times so the players could fight the fog. Both Shero and Smith told their players to shoot the puck whenever possible, creating a nightmare for both goaltenders. Sabres goalie Desjardins told Smith that the ice surface was so foggy he couldn’t see the puck. Eventually, he asked to be benched, thinking that perhaps Crozier would have better luck peering through the haze.
The coaches’ instructions to shoot, shoot, shoot worked. The Sabres and Flyers alternated taking the lead.
Along the way, a bat, of all things, got into Memorial Auditorium and without warning would suddenly swoop down on the spectators and players. At one point, Parent took a swing at it with his Sher-Wood stick. He missed, but the Sabres’ Jim Lorentz didn’t. He was getting ready to take a face-off when the bat flew over him. Lorentz killed the creature with a high stick.
As the third period wound down, the Flyers led 4-3. But the “French Connection” line swarmed Parent, screening him and allowing Hajt to score and send the game into sudden-death overtime. The 18,149 capacity crowd roared their approval.
The Sabres completed their rally when Martin slid the puck to Perreault, who relayed it to Robert. The latter scored low on Parent’s glove side near what would have been the end of the first OT period.
Inspired, the Sabres won Game Four to tie the series at two games apiece. Still, they were no match for the Flyers, who took Game Five 5-1 at home before shutting out the Sabres 2-0 for their second consecutive Stanley Cup championship.
Parent starred in the finale, making two great saves in the first period, on Robert and defensemen Jocelyn Guevrement. In the second stanza, Parent held off a Buffalo flurry, turning back six shots in less than three minutes. The Flyers’ Bob Kelly and Bill Clement scored the two Philadelphia goals. |
