Now the series is all tied up at 2 and it heads back to Carolina for Game 5 on Sunday.

Martin Gerber put on a goaltender's clinic Friday night in Buffalo. Sabres fans hope that their rookie goalie, Ryan Miller was paying attention. Miller definitely wasn't paying much attention on three of the four shots that somehow got past him. This was not the same Miller who helped the Sabres get this deep into the playoffs.

Carolina Coach Peter Laviolette decided to go with Gerber in goal instead of Cam Ward and his decision paid off huge dividends. Gerber made 22 saves and thwarted every single Sabres thrust. Miller, meanwhile, looked baffled out there and he definitely let the Sabres down when they needed him the most. Miller made 21 saves, but allowed 2 goals on the first 5 Hurricane shots. That immediately put the Sabres in a huge hole they couldn't climb out from. Both the goals were shots a sharp Miller would have stopped. Gerber would have had no trouble with either of them.

Gerber definitely gets the first star of this game, while Miller would get the goat award if they gave those out.

Gerber showed just how important a goalie in a crucial playoff game. Miller must watch the video of the game to see just how it's done.

The Sabres were down three of their top defensemen, so they needed Miller to stand on his head the way Gerber did. Instead, they got his worst performance of the playoffs.

On the other side of the coin, the Sabres offense has to share a lot of the blame for this crucial loss. They knew they had to generate much more offense to make up for the loss of Henrik Tallinder and Teppo Numminen (Dimitri Kalinin has been out for a couple weeks now). Instead, they got foiled by Gerber time and again and then struck out the rest of the way. The powerplay that proved to be the lifeblood of the Sabres up until now, did not exist. On two straight powerplays in the first period, they didn't manage a shot on goal while the Canes had a couple.

If the Sabres are to bounce back and stay in this series, they need both the offense and Miller to step up and play their absolute best. Friday night, they were at their absolute worst.

Usually an NHL playoff series boils down to the battle between the goaltenders. Friday night, Ryan Miller blinked and saw a stellar performance at the other end. Unless if Miller can match the heroics of Martin Gerber, this series will be done on Tuesday.

Gerber was outstanding in shutting out the Sabres offense. However, the Sabres forwards have to do a much better job in generating pressure on the Canes if they want to even score another goal in this series.

The blame for the Sabres loss on Friday has to be shared by all. The defense showed that it truly needed the services of the three lost defensemen. Miller looked shaky on 3 of his goals. But most of the blame has to fall squarely on the shoulders of the offense that was shooting blanks Friday.

Maxim Afinogenov has yet to make a real statement in this or any series thus far. Maxim was an offensive weapon during the regular season, but has fallen way short in the playoffs. Jochen Hecht has also underperformed inthe playoffs. All of the Sabres lines looked weak in front of a sellout crowd in Buffalo.

Now they have to go on the road and win where it will be much tougher.

Injuries wipe out Sabres defense

Not far off the shores of the Carolina coast lies the infamous Bermuda Triangle, sometimes called the "Limbo of the Lost." The Buffalo Sabres apparently have a Bermuda Triangle on the ice and it is swallowing up defensemen at a record pace.

The Limbo of the defensemen lost quite possibly could be the bane that pushes the Sabres over the edge of the abyss and pushes them completely into Devil's Hole, another name of the Bermuda Triangle.

Half the Sabres defensive corp has been wiped out due to injury. Two of their very top defensemen, Dmitri Kalinin and Teppo Numminen are on the shelf. Kalinin has a broken ankle and is very likely gone for the season. The Devil's Hole swallowed up yet another defenseman Wednesday night in Buffalo, this time Henrik Talliner, possibly the very best the Sabres have on the blueline. Talliner broke his left arm and is certainly gone until next fall.

Dary Regier, who has made a living sitting on his hands and doing nothing, did right that when he let Alexei Zhitnik slip through his fingers last summer. He did get Numminen and Toni Lydman, but he needed more, much more. Now the worst case scenario has hit Regier squarely in the face and all those who proclaimed him to be such a genius before and during the first two rounds of the playoffs now are having serious second thoughts.

Could this spell the end of Buffalo Stanley Cup hopes? Let's look at it this way: the defense isn't good enough now to even compete with the average NHL teams, let alone the top 3 remaining in the playoffs. Unless a miracle happens, of a much grander scheme than what happened in 1980 in the Olympics, the Sabres will find this latest injury is the straw that broke the Buffalo's back.

Sabres withstand Hurricane barrage in Game 3

"This team is good, scary good!" That's what Sabres announcer Rick Jeanerette described when the Sabres beat the Senators in overtime to end that series. The same could be said about the Carolina Hurricanes. They can be pretty scary, especially when they are playing out of extreme desperation. That was the case in game two when they laterally handed the Sabres their heads. Wednesday night, the Sabres took a commanding 4-1 lead on the Canes and that's when they decided to pull out all stops. The Hurricanes came on as strong as Katrina and swirled around the Sabres net, especially the last two minutes of the game. Once again, the Sabres had to withstand the storm to survive the damage that the Canes could cause.

Miller stood strong in the eye of the storm and once again was stellar in helping the Sabres win 4-3.

The victory on Wednesday came at a high price, however as an injury to their top defenseman Tallinder may have put a fork in the Sabres chances of advancing to the Stanley Cup finals. They are down to just 3 NHL defensemen now and this could wreck all hopes they have of even winning another game in the series.

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