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Sabres goalie Ryan Miller, who appeared rattled after the two losses in Philadelphia, stopped all 24 Flyers shots and Maxim Afinogenov put the icing on the cake with an even-strength goal in the third period.
It was the first time the Flyers were shut out in the playoffs since a 3-0 blanking April 24, 2002 in the Eastern Conference quarterfinals against Ottawa.
Now, with their backs firmly pressed against the wall, the Flyers must win the final two games of the series to advance to the next round.
And, if history is a prologue, the Flyers have only won a playoff series once in nine tries after falling behind 3-2.
Game 6 will be in Philadelphia at the Wachovia Center Tuesday night.
"I think their tenacity and hunger, not their speed, controlled the game," said Flyers coach Ken Hitchcock. "This is the best game they played in the series, even more than the games they beat us here earlier. They were very tenacious. They caused us to make soft plays with the puck at inopportune times."
One of those inopportune times came early in the game.
For the first time in the series, the Sabres didn’t score a goal in the opening 5:20.
Instead, they registered the first tally 45 seconds later.
Eric Desjardins was whistled for a hooking penalty after turning the puck over in his own zone on a weak pass from behind the net. The Sabres then capitalized on a mistake by one of the Flyers best penalty killers.
Tim Connolly took the puck near hisblue line and began skating up ice.
And as he skated, the Flyers kept backing up and backing up ..
And backing up some more.
Sami Kapanen got caught going the wrong way and Connolly danced around him.
Finally, Connolly decided to take advantage of this moonwalk by Flyers defensemen Derian Hatcher and Joni Pitkanen and move right into the slot.
He waited until Pitkanen basically backed into goalie Robert Esche before snapping a wrist shot over Esche’s glove, giving Buffalo the 1-0 lead for the fifth consecutive game.
"That was my fault," said Kapanen. "I tried to reach for his stick two or three times and I never got it. It was a total misread by me."
But the Flyers were able to hang with Buffalo, staying within a goal until the final minute of the second period when Petr Nedved and Savage were on a 2-on-1 break.
Nedved took a shot that hit the post, and as Savage was skating by the net, he was shoved by Buffalo defenseman Dmitri Kalinen, and brushed into Miller.
He was called for goaltender interference, and 11 seconds later, a failed clearing attempt, again by Desjardins, led to a 2-on-1 for Buffalo down low.
Denis Gauthier foolishly went down too early, allowing Daniel Briere to walk in on Esche before sliding a pass across to Dumont for an easy goal.
"Our player got beat off the boards there," Hitchcock said. "Should the defenseman have stayed on his feet there? Yeah. But we needed that puck out beforehand."
The final goal came on a lazy effort from Niko Dimitrakos.
With Buffalo bringing the puck into the Flyers zone, Briere drew two defensemen his way.
Freddy Meyer slid over because it appeared Dimitrakos was covering the trailing Afinogenov.
However, that wasn’t the case and Briere feathered the pass across the slot to Afinogenov, who easily beat Dimitrakos, and the score was put well out of reach.
Dimitrakos, who only took nine shifts in the game, never returned to the ice, and may not as the series returns to Philadelphia.
But despite mistakes by the Flyers leading to the Buffalo goals, a sad-sack offensive performance was the primary reason for the Flyers failure in Buffalo.
"It happened again here," said Peter Forsberg, who was held without a point for the first time in the series. "We’re not working hard enough. There’s nothing else to say. They were better. I thought we came in here with the momentum, but we’re just not playing good enough."
But perhaps the most damning comments about the Flyers listless performance came from Gauthier, who suggested the team wasn’t prepared to play the biggest game of the season to this point.
"You’re not going to win a playoff game with that kind of effort no matter who you’re playing," Gauthier said. "The way we showed up today, we might as well have just gone home after warmups."
