Buffalo 2, NY Rangers 1, OT
Like lightning striking a nearby tree. Like an arrow, piercing through the cool crisp morning mist, dropping a deer. Sudden. Quick. Deadly. 
That’s what it must have felt like to the New York Rangers when with only 7.7 seconds remaining in the game, leading 1-0, over the Buffalo Sabres, Chris Drury scores a goal and sends the game to overtime. Then to make matters worse, Maxim Afinogenov fired a shot 4:39 into the overtime from just inside the Sabres’ blue line. It bounced off Rangers forward Jed Ortmeyer’s stick and into the net, going between Henrik Lundqvist’s pads, to give Buffalo a 2-1 victory and a 3-2 lead in the series. Ortmeyer said he apologized to Lundqvist. “It’s hockey,” Ortmeyer said. “It’s bad bounces here and there. Obviously to have that happen, it’s tough. It was just a reaction, get my stick in the lane, trying to tip it out.”
“It goes along with the season,” Sabres coach Lindy Ruff said. “We’ve had a lot of victories where it kind of looks like you’re down and out and all of a sudden you come back and you tie it and then minutes later you win the game.
“I think it’s appropriate. I don’t like it. I was a little bit uptight on the bench, but you’ve got that belief it can be done.”
“That hurts,” Rangers captain Jaromir Jagr said. “There’s no question about it. That’s probably the toughest for me in 5 years.”
“It’s a tough loss,” Rangers Coach Tom Renney said. “We weren’t close to the better team on the ice today. We won’t try to hide behind any excuses. It was close for one reason, and that was our goalie.” Renney’s biggest disappointment was that the Rangers seemed to have spent the game trying to stave off disaster instead of trying to win. It worked for most of the game, but not long enough.
Despite being outplayed for most of the game, the Rangers had held Buffalo scoreless for 59 minutes. Lundqvist turned away chance after chance, stopping the Sabres’ first 36 shots. C
enter Daniel Brière peppered him with nine shots and Tim Connelly added seven. Afinogenov took five. The Sabres outshot the Rangers, 40-23. But Buffalo could get nothing past Lundqvist The Rangers scored their unlikely go-ahead goal on a wrist shot by center Martin Straka with 3 minutes 19 seconds left in the third period.
Leave it to co-captain Chris Drury, who forced overtime by scoring with under 8 seconds remaining. Drury’s goal, off a rebound in front, came on Buffalo’s 37th shot. All that remained was for Afinogenov, who was driving to the net from the left circle, 11 seconds after Blair Betts was penalized for hooking, to fire that last shot.
That last piercing shot that shocked and stunned the Rangers, and sent them back to New York, dazed and confused.
