EASTERN SEMI-FINALS
GAME SUMMARIES
GAME 5:
#4 TORONTO MAPLE LEAFS vs #8 PITTSBURGH PENGUINS
Toronto leads 3-2
Next Game: Monday May 17th, 1999 7:30pm at Pittsburgh
Twice in the third period, Jaromir Jagr raced into Toronto's zone with the puck on his stick, and both times defenseman Dimitri Yushkevich caught the Pittsburgh star and muscled him out of the play.
Nullifying Jagr was a key to a 4-1 victory Saturday night that put the Maple Leafs up 3-2 in the NHL Eastern Conference semifinals. Yushkevich played a tremendous game.
"My teammates helped cover for me, so it wasn't that hard," Yushkevich said. "I just tried to play against him like I play against anybody in the league, but always keeping in mind he's the best player in the world.
"He's a very strong guy and I try not to get involved with him physically in the neutral zone because if I lose my body position on him I lose everything. So I try to contain him in our end and try to take away his move to the middle."
Fanatical checking and goals by Sylvain Cote, Mike Johnson, Steve Thomas and Sergei Berezin won it for the Maple Leafs. The only puck to get behind Curtis Joseph was deflected in by teammate Kevyn Adams and was credited to Jan Hrdina.
Game 6 is Monday night in Pittsburgh, and unless Jagr can find a way to elude Yushkevich it might be all over in six games.
"Dimitri is doing a number on (Jagr)," said Joseph. "He's right there in his face every time."
Toronto jumped to a 2-0 lead on its first three shots on Tom Barrasso, who could not be blamed. Cote's slap shot from the blue line changed direction off Robert Lang and whizzed past Barrasso at 7:04, and Yushkevich's wrist shot from the blue line was deflected in by Johnson at 10:48. Both goals came shortly after Pittsburgh killed a penalty.
"We've been trying to get some traffic to the net and the first two goals were a direct result of that," said Johnson.
The Maple Leafs, meanwhile, checked the Penguins to a standstill. Frustration began to eat at Jagr. After being knocked to the ice cleanly by Yushkevich, Jagr swung his stick at him and was sent off for slashing at 19:34. Jagr threw his stick into the penalty box in anger.
Thomas made it 3-0 at 13:44 of the second period on a long cross-ice pass from Lonny Bohonos. Barrasso dropped to his knees and Thomas flipped the puck under the goalie's left arm as he skated beyond the goal line.
Hrdina got one back by accident when he passed from the side boards in Toronto's zone and Adams, reaching for the puck in front of the crease, poked it past an unsuspecting Joseph at 14:13.
Said Adams: "It's never happened before and let's hope it never happens again."
A capacity crowd of 18,800 roared its approval when Berezin burst into the clear and fired a low wrist shot past Barrasso with five minutes remaining in the game. Yanic Perreault had dug the puck loose along the boards.
"We have a lot of positives to carry over to Pittsburgh," said Maple Leafs forward Garry Valk.
Pittsburgh coach Kevin Constantine conceded that Yushkevich did "a pretty good job" on Jagr, but added that a groin injury that Jagr has played with throughout the playoffs once again hampered his skating.
"I don't think Jaromir is 100 per cent healthy," Constantine said. "I'm sure part of his frustration is that he's such a proud guy and he's so competitive and he wants to do so well that when he can't physically get done what he can do because of the injury, it's frustrating."
Jagr pointed to the absence of Alexei Kovalev, who missed his second straight game with a foot injury, and the subsequent shuffling of Pittsburgh's line combinations as one reason for the loss.
"It's frustrating when we don't play with the same lines," Jagr said. "Hopefully he's going to be back next game and we're going to play a lot better than we did tonight.
"They were the better team from the first minute. They have a great goalie and when you get down two goals to a team like that it's tough to come back. They deserved to win. We didn't want to be down 3-2 in this series. We were up 2-1. It's tough."
#6 BOSTON BRUINS vs #7 BUFFALO SABRES
Buffalo leads 3-2
Next game: Tuesday May 18th, 1999 7:30pm at Buffalo
For one game, the Dominator became the dominated.
On the brink of elimination after Dominik Hasek's Game 4 shutout, the Boston Bruins beat the Sabres goalie four times in 40 minutes on Sunday to win Game 5 of their Eastern Conference semifinal series 5-3.
"I think there was a little bit of the feeling (that) ... 'Dom is playing great, and Dom will win us the game. Let's have an easy one,"' said Sabres coach Lindy Ruff, who pulled Hasek after two periods in which Buffalo was outshot 26-11.
"I was worried about one of their guys breaking their stick over Dom."
The Sabres lead three games to two with a chance to clinch the series in Game 6 Tuesday night in Buffalo. In 18 tries, the Bruins have never won a playoff series after falling behind 3-1.
The Sabres mounted little offense in the first two periods, and on defense they were content to let their MVP goalie clean up their mistakes. One of the goals against Hasek was a screen shot, and another was scored on a two-on-zero.
"You like to think he's going to stop those, but he can't," Ruff said. "We gambled and we lost on our gambles, and it hurt us."
But Hasek made no excuses.
"I don't care if I was screened or whatever," said the two-time MVP and four-time Vezina Trophy winner, who has led the NHL in save percentage for each of the past six years. "Four goals in two periods is too much."
Boston has a stellar goaltender of its own in Byron Dafoe, who led the league with 10 regular-season shutouts and was third, right behind Hasek, with a 1.99 goals-against average. He stopped 20 shots for Boston, protecting a one-goal lead by turning away a slap shot by Geoff Sanderson with 1:46 to play.
"This isn't about the goalies," said Bruins forward Jason Allison, who had a goal and an assist. "They cancel each other out."
Only after Hasek was replaced by Dwayne Roloson at the start of the third did Buffalo make it close, with goals from Wayne Primeau and Joe Juneau that cut it to 4-3. Jason Allison made it 5-3 with 43 seconds left in the game.
"Hasek played like a human," Bruins defenseman Kyle McLaren said. "You can beat him but you have to get 30 or 40 shots."
Buffalo took a 1-0 lead when Joe Thornton was whistled for high-sticking just 20 seconds into the game. Seventeen seconds into the power play, Curtis Brown beat Dafoe.
The Sabres had not lost a playoff game this year in which they scored the first goal. And they nearly made it 2-0 midway through the first when Ray Bourque gave the puck away at Buffalo's blue line, sending Dixon Ward in all alone on Dafoe.
But Ward shot wide, and at the other end Sergei Samsonov fed Sweeney inside the blue line and he slapped it above Hasek's glove to end a 116-minute shutout streak. Samsonov gave Boston a 2-1 lead with his first goal in eight games 1:15 into the second.
Mattias Timander scored his first career playoff goal at 10:19 of the second, an unassisted slap shot from the point that made Hasek look human just two days after he shut out the Bruins on 24 shots in Game 4. Allison and Dmitri Khristich hooked up on a two-on-none to make it 4-1 at 13:34 of the second.
Buffalo made it 4-2 at 4:58 of the third when Erik Rasmussen made a nice move at the blue line and set up Primeau's goal. With 6:35 left in the game, Stu Barnes circled from behind the net and passed it across the crease to Juneau.