The Buffalo Sabres have played 4,076 regular season and playoff games in their history as they head into their 50th anniversary season. Try to pick the most memorable of all time? That's no small task.
But this choice has everything you need to be No. 1.
A classic overtime thriller. In the Stanley Cup final, no less. Iconic goals. Odd events. And an unforgettable atmosphere that gives it instant recognition to Sabres fans and hockey historians as we look back, just more than 44 years later.
This is an oral history of the Fog Game.
The date was May 20, 1975, in Memorial Auditorium. It was Game 3 of the Cup final between the Sabres and Philadelphia Flyers, the first championship-round game at home in franchise history. The Sabres trailed the series, two games to none, after suffering losses at the Spectrum by scores of 4-1 and 2-1, as Flyers goalie Bernie Parent stopped 45 of 47 shots.
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Frustrated as they were by losing the first two games of the series, the Sabres were confident in the way they played in Philly and in the fact that they were 6-0 at home in the first two rounds of the playoffs against Chicago and Montreal.
It was spring hockey but summer-like weather. The high temperature that day was 82 degrees, with temps still in the 70s at night and a humidity figure of more than 60 percent. Those numbers rated as the most significant numbers of the day — because the Aud had no air conditioning.
The Buffalo News recently jogged the memories of several participants in the game. Even more than four decades later, their memories of one of the most bizarre games in their careers remain sharp.
'Batman' takes aim
Goals by Gary Dornhoefer at 39 seconds and Don Saleski at 3:09 gave the Flyers a 2-0 lead and stunned the Aud crowd. Philly maintained the lead through the halfway mark of the first period. With just two goals against Parent in the first 130 minutes of the series, how would the Sabres ever get back in the game?
Enter a lone mammal.
A bat was seen flying in the rafters of the Aud and suddenly started to swoop down over the ice. A few players swatted at it with their sticks (or towels, if they were sitting on the bench) with no success. But Sabres winger Jim Lorentz struck it down with one swat just before a faceoff in the Philadelphia zone, earning a nickname ("Batman") that stuck for the rest of his playing days.
Sabres winger Danny Gare: "Nobody wanted to touch the thing. He knocked it with his stick out of the air. That was some amazing hand-eye coordination. It was flying around and Jimmy knocks it down in the faceoff circle. Everybody stood around, looked at it, looked at it, and no one moved on it. (Flyers center) Rick MacLeish just goes, takes his glove off and grabs it with his hand. I couldn't believe that. Skates over to the penalty box and drops it in there. Later in the game I hear (Flyers defenseman) Jimmy Watson going, 'I said to Ricky he could have got rabies and Ricky goes, 'It was dead.' "
Flyers enforcer Dave "The Hammer" Schultz: "Ricky picks it up and puts it in the penalty box. Better the bat there than me. We were laughing. Couldn't believe it. Brave guy."
Sabres defenseman Bill Hajt: "I was just happy it was gone. I didn't want a bat flying around the ice. I don't like the things. Jimmy was getting hate mail and all kinds of stuff after that."
Lorentz, to the Buffalo News and WGRZ-TV upon the closing of the Aud in 1996: "It was dive-bombing the crowd and a couple of times it came down near the ice and I remember Parent taking a couple of swings at it with his goal stick. ... The bat must have been pretty tired because he was just flying in a straight line. Once he got in range, I took one swing and that was it for him."
• • •
As the fog rolled in
Shortly after the bat was killed, the Sabres scored twice in 17 seconds to quickly tie the game on goals by Gare at 11:46 and Rick Martin at 12:03 of the first period. But MacLeish made it 3-2 for the Flyers at 14:13 and that was the score through 20 minutes. Don Luce tied it at 29 seconds of the second period, but Philly went back ahead on Reggie Leach's goal at 14:30 of the second to take a 4-3 lead into the third.
As the game moved on, a fog began to drift over the ice. It was a nuisance at first but became much more of an issue as the third period continued. Officials would stop play and make the players come on to the ice to skate around to try to lift the fog, while some arena workers joined the group carrying large bed sheets to assist in the efforts of breaking it up.
Sabres radio play-by-play man Rick Jeanneret: "The fog didn’t really throw me for a loop because I had seen it before in juniors. It was a situation of not having air conditioning in a lot of buildings. Very few of them had air conditioning. I wasn’t shocked that it happened."
Gare: "Not a big deal right away, but then it became sick fog, man. The first night we skated around. The ref would blow it dead, make us skate around and lift the fog up. We were skating playing a tough game in the Stanley Cup final. The last thing you want to do is skate around more. So they went solely to the ice crew guys with the sheets the second night we played in the series at the Aud (a 4-2 Buffalo win in Game 4). But the first night, it was mostly on us."
Hajt: "We were playing the game and not thinking of the novelty of it at the time. The fog was a nuisance. We wanted to play. It was the Stanley Cup final. You want to keep the game going, you have all these interruptions. You can't see and it's crazy."
Schultz: "It wasn't as bad for us on the ice when it started than it was, I'm sure, for people up above trying to watch. Remember, I didn't get on the ice much in those games. Looking across the ice wasn't easy. When the puck was near you at least, you were OK."
• • •
Getting even
The Flyers were maintaining the 4-3 lead nearly halfway into the third period. If they held it, they would have a 3-0 stranglehold on the series and the Sabres would have almost no chance to come back.
But the Sabres got a big surprise when Hajt tied the game at 9:56 of the third period by swooping in on a rebound. Then a 23-year-old rookie, Hajt had scored three goals in 76 games during the regular season but had not tallied in the first 13 games of the playoffs. It was one of just two goals he scored in 80 career postseason games — and the other one wasn't until 1985.
Hajt: "I remember Rico (Rick Martin) was one-on-one on Joe Watson. Everybody was standing there watching them do their thing. Rico was always dangerous and you're always thinking something positive would happen. I would mostly stay at home but for whatever reason — and I've never known why — I snuck in past their forwards and past their D. Rico faked the shot, went around Joe and Bernie Parent makes the save. The puck is right there. I'm skating in and it's right there. You couldn't believe it. I just roofed it and it was in. We needed a goal, I took a chance, and it worked out. That was a great moment for me, great moment for the team, something I'll always remember."
• • •
A long night's journey into OT
The third period ended with the score still 4-4, and the teams then battled through overtime — with seven breaks called by officials to try to dissipate the fog. It was nearly 12:30 a.m. when Rene Robert took a puck off the end boards and blasted it through Parent's legs to give the Sabres a 5-4 victory at 18:29 of overtime. It was their third consecutive OT win of the playoffs, the second on a Robert goal.
Robert: "People say it was one of the greatest goals ever, but that was probably one of the luckiest goals ever, too. You could try that a thousand times over and it wouldn't go in. I didn't have a lot of room. All I tried to do was hit the net and it happened to go in. We even shot from the far blue line because the fog was so thick. Anything you kept low and put on net, you had a chance. That's what I tried to do. I kept it low and I was rewarded."
Parent to NHL.com in 2017 during the NHL100 celebration: "I saw Robert's shot too late for me to come out and stop it. I'm surprised the overtime took so long. It was hard to see the puck from the red line. If three men came down and one made a good pass from the red line, you couldn't see the puck. A good shot from the red line could have won it."
Jeanneret: "I couldn’t see anything. I had to wait until I saw the reaction of the players to tell if it was in the net. There’s not a chance that I could have seen anything. I was sitting up top. Even though the broadcast location in the Aud was much better than it is in KeyBank because we hung right over the ice, as was the case in all the old buildings, I still couldn’t see a thing.
Hajt: "We all kind of collapsed around each other in the corner. Philly had our number. Couldn't beat them all year between bad luck and whatever. We seemed to have Montreal's number that year the same way. So it was a big win for us, a big way to get the Philly monkey off our back. It was relief but a tremendous positive thing for us because we were instantly back in the series."
Gare: "I just saw Rene going over the blue line and then you kind of lost the puck. You knew if it came out to him that he was going to shoot it from the circle. Bernie just stood there. Went right through him. I'm sure he couldn't see it. A great shot. Kept it low, which is what you needed to do there. It was glorious after that. It got us back in the series. They win that game, we're done right then and there."
Jeanneret: "Oh, it was a strange night all right. But it was one that turned out pretty good for the Sabres."
• • •
Epilogue
The Sabres won Game 4 two nights later, 4-2, as the fog was again at play in a few instances. The Flyers took Game 5 in the Spectrum, 5-1, and won the Cup back at the Aud with a 2-0 win in Game 6 exactly a week after the Fog Game. It took 24 years for the Sabres to get back to the final again; the Flyers have returned six times (last in 2010) and lost every series.
Sabres center Gilbert Perreault: "You go to the final once — I was expecting to be in the final again. We had a really good team from '75 to '84. We had a good team, but we didn't go back. They added more teams in the NHL and it got harder to make the final. Then you had Montreal winning six Stanley Cups, the Islanders with four, Edmonton, Boston. So when I look at my career of 16 years ... there's not too many different teams."
Schultz: "A lot of people said we were lucky to win the first Cup when we beat Boston (in 1974). That whole next season was showing we could do it again. The key to that series was sometimes teams have other teams' numbers and we felt we had Buffalo's number. They had the French Connection and great defense, but maybe their weakness was probably in goal and we had Bernie. We'd say, 'How many do we need tonight? One? Two?' We were that confident in him and he was that confident. We lost that night — but I think you can say there were some extra reasons why."
Hajt: "In retrospect now, the Fog Game has become folklore in NHL hockey and one of those games you're really glad you were a part of. At the time, we were about getting the job done."
Perreault: "I wish we had won the Cup. It's my favorite team. We were in the final. It was great playing with Rene and Rick and Danny and we had such a great team. Goal scorers. Roger Crozier in the net. Defense. It was a real good team. A lot of power to score goals."
Schultz: "I lived here a couple of years after I finished playing with the Sabres (in the 1978-79 season) and really enjoyed it. Nice place. Sports town. Great hockey town. They deserve a Cup. I know we won one here with Philly that they wanted, but Buffalo deserves one."
News Sports Reporter Lance Lysowski contributed to this story.
