Remembering one of the greatest teams in Sabres history 50 years later.
Sabres.com is commemorating the 50th anniversary of the 1974-75 season, which saw the Sabres advance to the Stanley Cup Final for the first time in franchise history, with a comprehensive history of the team.
Five years removed from their inception, the 1974-75 Sabres earned 113 points and boasted six 30-goal scorers – still one of just three teams in NHL history to accomplish that feat.
“I think that was, to me personally and I think the guys who played on that team, the birth of hockey here in Buffalo,” Danny Gare said. “When I think of the Sabres over 50 years, that year was the year that it escalated to being a legitimate National Hockey League team.”
Originally compiled from interviews during the franchise’s 50th season in 2019-20, the series collects thoughts from 12 alumni who played during the franchise’s thrilling first decade: Rene Robert, Don Luce, Danny Gare, Mike Robitaille, Gerry Meehan, Bill Hajt, Floyd Smith, Jim Lorentz, Jim Schoenfeld, Gerry Desjardins, Craig Ramsay, and Gilbert Perreault.
Before we discuss the 1974-75 Buffalo Sabres, we need to address how the franchise became a Stanley Cup contender a mere five years after its inception.
The answer, by most accounts, is George “Punch” Imlach.
Imlach arrived in Buffalo with four Stanley Cups on his resume and a chip on his shoulder.
After being fired from the Toronto Maple Leafs in spring 1969. A Sports Illustrated feature from November 1970 reported that Imlach had his picture placed in large advertisements in the Toronto Telegram, seeking to lure fans from his former club down the QEW to root on the Sabres. (It’s the sort of petty creativity one might expect from a man who, fed up with the lengthy nature of the NHL Amateur Draft, used his 11th-round pick on a fictional player named Taro Tsujimoto in 1974.)
Punch Imlach was many things, according to those who played for him. He could be tough to play for. Mike Robitaille, the former Sabres defenseman who would go on to become a longtime broadcaster for the team, recalls Imlach keeping a train ticket visibly sticking out of his pocket during conversations with players. “Just to give you a reminder,” Robitaille explained.
Imlach was also a man who, underneath his hard exterior, cared deeply for his players and others in the organization. Early in his career, Sabres play-by-play man Rick Jeanneret would often go for dinner and drinks with Imlach and fellow broadcaster Ted Darling. Imlach insisted their wallets never leave their pockets.
Longtime Sabres forward Don Luce got to know Imlach better than many. Luce had no agent in those days, so he would negotiate his own contracts with Imlach. The conversations would go something like this:
Luce gave Imlach a dollar amount.
Imlach said the amount was unreasonable and reminded Luce he could be traded.
Luce told Imlach to make the deal if he felt it made the team better.
“And then that was the end of the conversation, and we talked just hockey for another two hours,” Luce said. “We’d do this for like 10 days straight because he just loved to talk hockey and he didn’t like to talk to agents. … Punch was great. He was great. He had a great persona of being this mean guy and the craziness, being hardnosed and everything. He loved his players. He loved them and he would take care of them.”
Rene Robert once offered a similar description of his former coach.
“I had a great relationship with Punch,” Robert said. “Punch was a man that was very tough but very loyal to his players. He would never give us a day off. We were not allowed to have ice or water on the bench. But when Punch Imlach shook your hand on a deal, you could take it to the bank. That’s how loyal Punch Imlach was. A lot of people don’t like him. I loved Punch Imlach.”
Punch Imlach (right) with Gilbert Perreault and Rick Martin.
All of this is to say: Punch Imlach was a colorful, complicated personality. But, above all, he was a brilliant hockey mind who understood how to build a franchise from the ground up.
The first piece was easy. The Sabres were awarded the first pick in the 1970 amateur draft over fellow expansion team Vancouver thanks to the spin of a roulette wheel, and Imlach made the obvious pick by selecting Gilbert Perreault. With that, the franchise had its centerpiece.
But Perrault alone would not be enough. Imlach would turn the team into a contender with shrewd trades and consistent drafting, but that would take time. In the meantime, he filled the inaugural roster with seasoned veterans who would produce an exciting brand of hockey for the fans in Buffalo.
“He knew he wasn’t going any place the first two years with what he had to work with,” Robitaille said. “He said, ‘Well, we might not win many games, but I’m going to tell you what – if I’m going to bring in some players, I’m going to bring in guys who would blow the lid off this place.'”
The list of acquisitions included goaltender Roger Crozier, a former Calder Trophy and Conn Smythe Trophy winner with Detroit whose career had been slowed by illness and injury. Crozier captured the imaginations of fans with a 50-save performance in the team’s inaugural home game, a 3-0 loss to the Montreal Canadiens.
Gerry Meehan – at 24, a key contributor on the 1970-71 team – recalls the presence of veterans like Eddie “The Entertainer” Shack, Phil Goyette, Don Marshall, and Dick Duff as being vital to the development of the team’s young players. Imlach coaxed defenseman Tim Horton – a future Hall of Famer who had played under him in Toronto – out of retirement in 1972-73, adding an instant leader and a player who would profoundly impact Buffalo’s young defensemen.
As the years wore on, that list of young players grew quickly. Imlach hit three home runs in the 1971 draft, selecting Rick Martin (fifth overall), Craig Ramsay (19th), and Bill Hajt (33rd). He added Jim Schoenfeld (fifth) in 1972 and Danny Gare (29th) in 1974. All five are in the Sabres Hall of Fame.
Imlach combined that success in the draft with trades for Luce, Robert, Jerry Korab, and Jim Lorentz. By 1972-73, the Sabres were a playoff team with most of the pieces that would comprise the 1974-75 team already in place. They pushed the Montreal Canadiens – who were entrenched in a dynasty – to six games before falling in the opening round.
Robitaille and Meehan were both traded by Imlach at the start of that 1974-75 season in a deal that brought defenseman Jocelyn Guevremont from Vancouver. Yet both insist today that Imlach was chiefly responsible for the organization’s early success.
“He understood that building a team isn’t just about getting players to go on the ice,” Meehan said. “It’s about making the parts each contribute in a way that’s suitable to that player and the sum of the parts is a better outcome than just slapping guys on the ice and saying, ‘Go play defense or forward.’ He had a good sense of how to build a team.”
Robitaille put it plainly. Punch Imlach was, he said, “The key to the whole thing.”
Danny Gare was tending to his lawn in Nelson, British Columbia when he got the call that made him a Sabre in spring 1974.
Gare remembers pushing the mower through the hilly landscape, sweating out a hot May afternoon when his mother called him from the front door.
“Danny! Danny! Punch Imlach’s on the phone!”
“She’s screaming at me and I got the mower, I can’t hear her very well, she’s waving her arms,” Gare recalled. “I go in and Punch Imlach was on the phone and said, ‘Hey Danny, welcome to the Buffalo Sabres. We just drafted you, wanted to say we’ll be in touch with you,’ and so forth and so on. I didn’t say much, I just listened. It was a great day.”
Gare was selected days later by the Winnipeg Jets in the rival World Hockey Association’s draft. But he was familiar with the Sabres, particularly with the French Connection of Rick Martin, Gilbert Perreault, and Rene Robert. Plus, it was his dream to play in the NHL. He chose Buffalo.
He became a key presence not only for the 1974-75 team, but for an entire era of Sabres hockey.
Training camp was held in St. Catharine’s, Ontario. It was there that Gare had his “welcome to the NHL” moment. Gare was small in stature – he stood 5-foot-9 during his NHL career – and so his father instilled in him the importance of toughness at a young age. He trained in boxing and, in his final year of junior hockey, he accumulated 238 penalty minutes to go with 127 points. He felt ready for the next level.
Then he ran into Jim Schoenfeld. One practice, the 6-foot-2 defenseman flattened Gare with a hard hit behind the net, then smiled as he helped Gare up to his skates.
“I remember the big redhead, after he hit me, he came down and put his glove in hand and grabbed me by the shirt and pulled me up and he goes, ‘Welcome,'” Gare said.
It was one of several awe-inspiring moments the 20-year-old Gare would experience that fall. He remembers one such instance in a Holiday Inn lobby, where he first met Martin, Perreault, and Robert. Another came following his first practice at Buffalo Memorial Auditorium, when he ventured alone up to the steep orange seats and imagined what it might be like to one day score a goal there.
Reality quickly exceeded whatever he might have dreamt. The Sabres opened their season at home against the Boston Bruins on Oct. 10, 1974. Gare started the game on a line with Don Luce and Craig Ramsay, tasked with checking Boston’s top players: Wayne Cashman, Phil Esposito, and Ken Hodge at forward; Bobby Orr and Gary Doak on defense.
It was another awestruck moment for Gare, who’d watched these players only months prior in the Stanley Cup Final against Philadelphia.
The puck went into the Boston zone off the opening faceoff. Ramsay quickly had an attempt from in front of the net, and the rebound kicked out the left. Gare was in the perfect spot to bury it into a wide-open net.
Here’s the kicker: The goal came 18 seconds into Gare’s NHL career, matching the number on the back of his sweater that now hangs in the KeyBank Center rafters. Gare leapt in the air and thought to himself, “Maybe I belong here.”
“Because you never know,” he said. “You work so hard to get to the league and then when you get there, it was pretty cool. You get the confidence, and that year it just seemed to grow and grow and grow and grow.”
The Sabres won the game, 9-5. Gare tallied a goal and an assist, the beginning of a 31-goal, 62-point rookie season.
“It really started us off for the season and it continued to get better and grow and elevate our games,” Gare said. “We were a young team, we were an exciting team, we were a good group of guys, and we were a very close group. What a way to start a career.”
Looking back on No. 11’s storied career
Bill Hajt is speaking to a group of reporters inside the KeyBank Center media room in November 2019. It’s “1970s Night,” and Hajt is one of several Sabres alumni in attendance to look back on the franchise’s inaugural decade.
“You remember everything about your first year,” Hajt says.
Hajt’s first year was 1974-75. So, he remembers the Sabres struggling in exhibition play, and he remembers a mediocre start to the regular season. And he remembers the turning point, a 7-2 loss in Los Angeles on Oct. 24. He’s only off by one when he recalls the shot count that night (55-31, in favor of the Sabres).
“That kind of hit everybody,” Hajt said. “We’ve got a good hockey team here. We maybe didn’t win, because [Kings goalie Rogie] Vachon stood on his head and [Sabres goalie Gary Bromley] didn’t have a good game. But, we’ve got a good team here.
“We lost one of our next 22 hockey games. We just went on a tear. And from then on, we were in first place the rest of the year. It was just kind of the wake-up call.”
Once again, Hajt’s memory checks out. Following the loss to the Kings, the Sabres went 18-1-3 over their next 22 games, beginning with a 2-0 shutout in St. Louis. They later went on a 12-game unbeaten streak in February, which began with an 8-1 win over Kansas City in which they tallied 58 shots, a franchise record that remains intact today.
They won because they were balanced. It started with the famed French Connection line of Rick Martin, Gilbert Perreault, and Rene Robert.
Perreault was, in the words of longtime play-by-play announcer Rick Jeanneret, “the straw that stirred the drink.” He was unquestionably the team’s best player, if not the best in Sabres history. When Perreault had the puck behind his own net, fans would stand in anticipation of an end-to-end rush while opposing players retreated to their own blue line.
Martin was a born goal scorer. It’s what he loved to do. He crossed the blue line intent on getting the puck to the net, regardless of what it took to get it there. In 1974-75, Martin scored 52 goals for the second straight season.
Robert may have been the most defensively aware of the three, though he was an offensive talent in his own right. He could score goals and set up his linemates, and he had a knack for sneaking up on opponents by coming in behind the play. It was Robert who led the 1974-75 Sabres with 100 points.
But the team was more than just the French Connection. Off the ice, they were close like a family. On the ice, they were fiercely competitive, with each line trying to outdo the others. There were fights in practice. Players constantly pleaded with coach Floyd Smith for more ice time.
“Well, they were eager to play,” Smith said. “Anybody who took a short shift and came over to the bench, it didn’t make any difference who was going next. If you weren’t ready to go, Martin was on the ice. They just wanted to play.”
The “checking line” of Don Luce, Craig Ramsay, and Danny Gare – tasked with matching up with opponents’ top lines – combined for 90 goals. The third line of Jim Lorentz, Rick Dudley, and Peter McNab scored 78.
In fact, the Sabres had six players score 30 or more goals – Martin (52), Robert (40), Perreault (39), Luce (33), Dudley (31), and Gare (31) – setting an NHL record that has since been matched only twice, by the 1977-78 New York Islanders and the 1984-85 Winnipeg Jets.
The team’s 354 goals remain a franchise record.
The Sabres had 6 players score 30-plus goals in 1974-75, one of three teams in NHL history to accomplish that feat.
On defense, the Sabres had a physically imposing pair in Jim Schoenfeld and Jerry Korab, a duo that Smith says “nobody in the league could challenge.” They had Hajt, who teammates revere as one of the true underrated players in the franchise’s history.
Schoenfeld mentions Lee Fogolin, the team’s first-round pick that summer, who appeared in 50 games and added another physical presence. Hajt recalls the character that Larry Carriere, a second-round pick in 1972, brought to the back end. The Sabres also added Jocelyn Guevremont, an All-Star the year prior, in an October trade.
It all added up to a 49-16-15 record, good for 113 points and a first-place finish in the Adams Division. It’s a franchise record that has only been matched by the Presidents’ Trophy team of 2006-07.
Eight players – Robert, Martin, Luce, Dudley, Lorentz, Korab, Hajt, and forward Brian Spencer – posted the highest point totals of their careers.
“The better the team does collectively, the better you do as an individual,” Lorentz said. “I think that’s what we understood and that’s what made us successful.”
As the 1974-75 season wore on, Punch Imlach decided the Sabres needed an upgrade in net. Roger Crozier was a former All-Star who gave the Sabres instant credibility upon joining the team for their inaugural season, but by 1974 a battle with pancreatitis had limited his availability. Crozier played only 23 games in the regular season, leaving second-year goalie Gary Bromley to shoulder the load.
That changed in March with the acquisition of Gerry Desjardins. Desjardins had been playing for the Michigan Stags of the World Hockey Association – “probably the worst hockey team in the world,” he said – but a clause in his contract allowed him to leave if the team relocated. It did, to Baltimore, midway through the season, and Imlach was quick to call.
“He says, ‘Would you be interested in signing with the Sabres?'” Desjardins recalled. “I almost dropped the phone. I couldn’t believe what he was asking me. I says, ‘Are you kidding me?'”
Desjardins came with NHL experience; before leaving for the WHA, he played six seasons for Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York. Joining a team already well on its way to the postseason, he also felt lofty expectations.
“It was fun coming to a great team, but I just felt – at the time I think there was like 15 games left in the season and everybody thought I was the ticket to the Stanley Cup back then,” he said.
The road to the Cup began against a Chicago team that had finished with 82 points, third in the Smythe Division. The Sabres dispatched the Blackhawks in five games for their first series win in franchise history. Jim Schoenfeld remembers feeling like it was simply another checked box.
“I just looked at it as the first step,” he said. “I really believed in the team. I thought we were going to win the Stanley Cup, so that was one opponent we had to get past. I wasn’t shocked, surprised. I was certainly thrilled. … I guess, for lack of a better term, I kind of expected us to win that series.”
Floyd Smith, the coach of the team, echoed that sentiment.
“We were supposed to win that, and we did,” he said.
There was, however, one moment from the series that lives in Smith’s mind still today, and it involved the young captain Schoenfeld. The Blackhawks in those days featured a young, bruising defenseman named Phil Russell, a future Sabre who would go on to amass 2,038 penalty minutes during a 15-year career.
Schoenfeld fought Russell during the second period of Game 4, and Smith remembers the two men trading haymakers in one of the greatest fights he ever saw. Longtime broadcaster Rick Jeanneret referred to the fight among the best in Sabres history, saying it was so good that the officials stood to the side and watched.
“That turned our team right around,” Smith said. “It didn’t make us go from bad to good. It’s just, ‘Hey, we’re here.’ Simple as that.”
Next up was a date with the Montreal Canadiens, a team that had beaten the Sabres two years prior. The Canadiens had already won the Stanley Cup twice in the ’70s – in 1972 and ’73 – and would go on to win four straight from 1976 to ’79.
Montreal’s roster in 1975 featured 11 future Hall of Famers and was coached by another in Scotty Bowman. The Canadiens earned 113 points – the same as the Sabres – to finish atop the Norris Division. Yet it was the Sabres who went undefeated with four wins and a tie in five regular season meetings.
“We had more Frenchmen than they did,” Smith said. “We had good French players. They wanted to play against the Quebec team, and they played.”
Gare scored in overtime to win Game 1, 6-5. The Sabres won again at The Aud in Game 2, were blown out in Games 3 and 4 in Montreal, then won another overtime contest in Buffalo in Game 5. Robert scored the winning goal.
It was Robert’s second overtime goal in his playoff career. The first came in Game 5 against Montreal two years prior.
“When you look back over the history of this team,” defenseman Mike Robitaille said, “if you had to go into a game in overtime and say it’s predicated on, ‘Whoever scores the first goal, that’s it, game’s over, you win the Stanley Cup. Buffalo, who do you want on the ice?’ Well, I can think of many players. I would really have to give a lot of thought to putting Rene Robert on the ice. The bigger the game, the bigger the goal. He had a penchant for that. It wasn’t luck. He was good.”
Rene Robert scores in OT
The Sabres went back to Montreal and took the deciding Game 6, 4-3. Desjardins made 29 saves.
The team flew back to Western New York and landed in Niagara Falls rather than Buffalo. The thinking, Smith says, was that by landing in the Falls rather than their usual spot, they would avoid getting caught in too large a crowd. When they landed, they were to hop on buses that would take them to their cars at the usual airport.
The crowd came anyway. Stories change as years pass, and it’s difficult to pinpoint how many fans were waiting for the Sabres’ plane on May 8, 1975. Fred Stanfield estimated there were 20,000 people. Schoenfeld said it might have been 5,000. But they all remembered the crowd.
“That was sort of the magic of it,” Schoenfeld said. “We were relatively new. We were the fresh faces in town at a very early time in franchise history, challenging for the big prize. The town was on fire for us. It really was. You couldn’t have asked for better fan support than we had in Buffalo in the mid-70s.”
“When we got on the bus, our wives were there,” Desjardins said. “But I remember being on the bus almost being ready to leave, and the fans were rocking the bus. It was a little scary, but it was something to see.”
Desjardins counts the victory as his fondest memory in the NHL.
The Philadelphia Flyers were the defending Cup champions, having beaten Boston in six games in 1974. Bernie Parent posted a 30-save shutout in the deciding game to clinch the Conn Smythe Trophy as the most valuable player of the playoffs. He led the league in wins and save percentage and claimed his first Vezina Trophy, awarded then to the netminder who allowed the fewest goals.
Parent was similarly dominant in 1974-75. He earned the Vezina and led the league in wins once again, then he posted three shutouts in playoff series victories over Toronto and the New York Islanders.
Playing in front of Parent was the feared “Broad Street Bullies” lineup featuring a Hall of Fame captain in Bobby Clarke; offensive talents like Rick MacLeish, Reggie Leach, and Bill Barber; and legendary tough guys in Dave Schultz, Andre Dupont, and Bob Kelly.
To put those Flyers in perspective, they led the NHL that season with 1,967 penalty minutes. By comparison, second-place St. Louis had 1,275. The Sabres were a close third with 1,229.
Gare recalls meeting Schultz after he was traded to Buffalo from Pittsburgh in 1979. Gare was captain of the Sabres by then and had fought Schultz over the years. When Schultz walked into the dressing room, Gare asked, “So, you want to go again, or you want to shake my hand?” The two shook hands.
“You hated them,” Gare said of the NHL in those days. “You hated everybody. That’s the way it was. You hated them all.”
The Sabres went 0-3-1 against the Flyers in the regular season and historically had a tough time winning at The Spectrum. That said, they had no fear entering the final.
“We felt we were a better team,” Don Luce said. “We weren’t intimidated. We could play with them physically. I think we had more skill. I think we had a much better defense.”
“They had a great team with Bobby Clarke and Rick MacLeish and [Gary] Dornhoefer, you can go right down the line,” said forward Jim Lorentz. “They were very good up front. … But as far as being intimidated, no, I don’t think we were intimidated at all.”
The Sabres outshot the Flyers, 28-22, in Game 1 at the Spectrum in Philadelphia but lost, 4-1. All five goals were scored in the third period. Robert once remembered having three shots from about 20 feet out in that game.
“Normally out of those three, I’d score at least once,” Robert said. “[Parent] stopped all of them. I turned and I looked at Gilbert and I go, ‘This is going to be a long series.'”
Perreault told The New York Times after the game that the Sabres should have led 4-0 entering the third period. Flyers coach Fred Shero said it had been the sharpest he’d seen Parent all season.
The Flyers took Game 2 at the Spectrum, 2-1, sending the Sabres back to Buffalo with a 2-0 series deficit.
Jim Schoenfeld attacks the Philadelphia net during The Fog Game.
The temperature in Buffalo on May 20, 1975 peaked around 82 degrees – 14 degrees higher than the historic average, according to the website Weather Underground. It was still 75 degrees by the time the puck dropped between the Sabres and Flyers for Game 3.
The temperature inside Buffalo Memorial Auditorium – which lacked air conditioning and sat upwards of 16,000 fans – was closer to 90 degrees. The result was a heavy fog that lifted up from the ice, producing the backdrop for one of the most memorable games in the history of the Stanley Cup Final.
“The game was kind of foggy and kind of embarrassing, to be honest with you,” Robert once said.
“Kids were skating around with sheets to bring the fog down and then when you’d bring it down at one end, it’d go up at the other end. So, it was hard to breathe, it was tough skating and playing.”
The New York Times reported that, due to the lack of visibility, the game had to be halted 12 times in the last 33 minutes alone. Players were given towels and asked to skate around during stoppages to help raise the fog.
“The fog would lift, and as soon as it’d lift, they’d say, ‘OK, start playing again.’ It was crazy,” Luce said.
The game required intense concentration. A player might see a motion and have to guess whether the puck had been sent into the right or left corner.
“Where did it go?” Luce recalls thinking. “Did he pass it to me? You couldn’t see very far, so you had to guesstimate a lot. It was tough to play in, very tough.”
As if the fog wasn’t enough of an oddity on its own, a bat could be seen flying around the Aud throughout the game. Lorentz recalls being able to tell where the bat was in the building based on the noise of the crowd. On one occasion, he remembers Parent swatting at it with his goalie stick. “It was the only thing Bernie missed in that series,” he would say later.
When the bat came flying towards Lorentz, he too took a swat at it. He didn’t miss.
“I don’t know whether it was tired, but it was sort flying in a relatively straight,” Lorentz said.
“And just out of habit I reached up with my stick and it was a direct hit. The bat fell to the ice.”
The Flyers’ MacLeish took off his glove, picked up the bat, and tossed it into the penalty box. Danny Gare lined up for the ensuing faceoff and recalls hearing Flyers defenseman Jimmy Watson tell MacLeish he should have left his glove on since the bat could have had rabies.
MacLeish’s response, according to Gare: “What’s rabies?”
Lorentz and the bat
The game itself was a back-and-forth affair worthy of the circumstances surrounding it. The Flyers took a 2-0 lead against goalie Gerry Desjardins just 3:09 into the contest. Gare and Rick Martin scored 17 seconds apart to tie the game, but MacLeish beat Desjardins from some 30 feet out to restore the Flyers’ lead going into the first intermission. At that point, Desjardins requested to be replaced by Roger Crozier.
“I felt it was in the best interest of the team,” he told the media afterward.
Luce and Leach traded goals in the second period to make it 4-3 in favor of Philadelphia. Bill Hajt scored to tie the game with 10:04 remaining in the third, and the score held. The players, exhausted not only from playing in the heat but also from having to battle the fog during stoppages, were going to overtime.
We mentioned earlier how Robert had developed a penchant for scoring overtime goals, which he had done the series prior against Montreal. His most famous goal, if not the most famous in the history of the Sabres, came against the Flyers.
With 1:31 remaining in the overtime period, Robert came down the right side and took a shot that emerged from the fog and beat Parent low, forcing the goaltender to stumble down to the ice.
Years later, Robert chalked up the goal as a lucky break.
“It was an angle that was almost impossible to score from,” he said. “I could try that thousands of times over and I would probably never. It just happened it was meant to be that the puck went into the right place, but it was pure luck. Yeah, I wanted to shoot on the net, that I agree with.
“But I never knew I was going to score from there. I mean, you could try that your whole career and never score. It was just meant to be.”
His teammates disagree.
“It was a great shot,” Luce said. “But, you know, also he’s shooting it through the fog. It was a good shot. Back then, the goalies were stand-up goalies, so he beat him on the short side. I don’t know if the fog made a difference because it was such a good shot.”
The Sabres won Game 4 at the Aud, 4-2, to even the series heading back to Philadelphia. Desjardins returned to the net and made 23 saves.
Robert wins Game 5 in OT
The Flyers won the final two games to capture their second straight Stanley Cup championship. Game 5 at the Spectrum opened with three first-period goals against Desjardins and ended as a 5-1 win.
Crozier made his first start of the series in Game 6 and matched Parent through two scoreless periods. The Flyers took the lead on a goal from Bob Kelly scored 11 seconds into the third and went on to win, 2-0. Parent posted a 32-save shutout to earn the Conn Smythe Trophy for the second straight year.
Here’s how Parton Keese of The New York Times described the scene afterwards:
“In the quiet Sabre dressing room, the name “Parent” was repeated often. ‘Some people say Parent is lucky,’ said Jocelyn Guevremont, a Sabre defenseman. ‘But that’s not luck the way he plays.'”
The players still look to Parent as the difference 50 years later.
“Bernie Parent was the difference,” Luce said. “He was hot. Tough to beat. When you have a hot goaltender in a situation like that, it’s tough. But we felt we were a better team. … When Bernie was hot, he was hot.”
“We thought we were better than anybody,” said forward Craig Ramsay. “Whether we were or not doesn’t matter. You have to believe that. You don’t get there without thinking you’re the best. We thought we could beat anybody and wish we’d beaten them. But Bernie was special.”
Sabres coach Floyd Smith told reporters afterward that his team would be back in the final. Many of his players shared that sentiment, for good reason. They were young, talented, and had impressive depth.
That group never did make it back, despite making the playoffs each year for the remainder of the seventies and finishing with 100-plus points four times. They nearly made it in 1980 but lost in the semifinal round to an Islanders team on the verge of a dynasty.
“We’re all kids,” Ramsay said. “We thought we’d be here year after year. It just didn’t happen. Come playoff time, we would struggle. It was disheartening.”
Hajt says the losses of Rick Dudley, who left after the season for the World Hockey Association, and defenseman Larry Carriere, who was traded, left a void that was never filled.
“We thought if we could have kept that team together, we would have been there several times because we were very, very deep,” Hajt said. “Like, amazingly deep. It was so much fun to play on that team. So much fun.
“I don’t have to tell you, you’ve got to have a perfect mix to make it all the way. We had a good team, but we had two really important missing pieces that we never got back. Because of that, we just weren’t as strong.”
For some, the sting of the loss in 1975 remains today, though perhaps it’s overshadowed by what they gained. Those who played on the Sabres teams of the seventies grew up together as the expansion franchise took Buffalo by storm. Their wives were friends. They knew each other’s children. Most remain friends today.
“More like family, I guess, than a team,” said the captain Schoenfeld. “So, when I think back to that 74-75 team, I think of us as such. I think it was a group of men who pulled together as a family and tried real hard to pull together to get the big prize, but just fell short.”
