Sabres Classics: Hasek shuts out Boston in Game 4

Following their first-round sweep of the Ottawa Senators, the Buffalo Sabres' path to the 1999 Stanley Cup Final took them through another division rival.

The Boston Bruins played a similarly heavy, shutdown style to the Sabres. The two teams both finished the regular season with 91 points, though the Sabres took four out of five head-to-head matchups.

"If you go through the entire playoffs - Ottawa, Boston, Toronto, Dallas - in retrospect, I thought Boston would've been the easiest team," Michael Peca said. "… But they just played a great team game, they really did. Playing at the TD Garden was never an easy place to play in Boston."

Added Jason Woolley: "For us as players, we knew it was going to be a battle. It was a dogfight. They had a lot of similar players to us. Once again, how was special teams going to match up? Who was going to play better in the nets? And we won both of those battles."

The Bruins took Game 1, 4-2. The Sabres won Game 2 in Boston, 3-1, and then erased a third period deficit to earn a 3-2 victory in Game 3.

In Game 4, the battles in net and on special teams proved crucial. Dominik Hasek turned away 24 shots for his second shutout of the playoffs in a 3-0 victory. Alexei Zhitnik opened the scoring on the power play, while Peca added a shorthanded goal in the third period.

The Sabres had ranked 21st on the power play at 13.5 percent in 1998-99. That number rose to 20 percent in the playoffs, which became a key factor in their run.

Woolley and Zhitnik manned the points, giving players like Peca and Miroslav Satan the chance to clean up shots down low.

"I thought playoff hockey was our type of hockey," Woolley said. "Z and I would just get pucks to the net. Z could bomb it, I was more of a setup guy. And obviously Miro, Pecs, [Geoff Sanderson], we had so many guys who could fire the puck."

The victory sent the Sabres back to Boston with a commanding 3-1 series lead, one win away from returning to the Eastern Conference Final for the second straight year.