The bat and the fog were sideshows to the Sabres' real problem: The Flyers kept taking leads. Philadelphia was up 2-0 3:09 into the game, led 3-2 after one period and 4-3 after two.
Defenseman Bill Hajt scored midway through the third period to tie it 4-4, and the game went into overtime.
The fog, which had forced play to be stopped five times during the first three periods so that players and rink workers could skate around the ice to try to dissipate it, became almost impenetrable as the night went on. Play was stopped seven more times during overtime for the same reason.
Perhaps amazingly, considering the conditions, the teams nearly made it through overtime without a goal. But at 18:29, Rene Robert, the right wing on the Sabres' "French Connection" line, took a pass from Gilbert Perreault in the corner to the left of Flyers goaltender Bernie Parent.
Robert took a shot from just above the goal line. Parent never saw the puck before it went into the net, giving Buffalo a 5-4 win.
"I saw Robert's shot too late for me to come out and stop it," Parent said. "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."
Robert said he wasn't even trying to score when he took the shot.
"It's almost impossible to score from that angle," Robert said. "But I shot at the net, hoping somebody could get the rebound. It seemed to me Parent] wasn't ready for the shot. It went between his legs."
The win gave the Sabres new life, and they evened the series two nights later
[with a 4-2 win at home
. But the Flyers
won 5-1 at home in Game 5
, then returned to Buffalo one week after the fog incident and clinched their second straight Cup championship
with a 2-0 victory
, celebrating while skating around a fog-free Memorial Auditorium.