Maybe it's still all about the goalie

This one was for all those who think the goaltender position is overrated.

Hockey is a team sport, but there is only one player who can erase mistakes, make up for being outplayed, and allow a lesser team to steal a game. Or a series. Buffalo's Ryan Miller delivered a textbook example of how that is done Thursday night in Game 1 of this first-round series.

The Flyers outskated and outshot the Sabres for two frantic periods. They won most of the battles along the boards, they dominated the puck, they had the Sabres defensemen looking uneasy going into the corners.

They did not score.

Miller didn't do anything superhuman. He plays the position so efficiently, so gracefully, that he seldom has to be flashy in order to be excellent. He made a handful of really good saves. The rest he made look routine.

But he saved them all.

There were a pair of saves on Jeff Carter that looked big at the time and loomed larger as the game wore on. In the final minute of the second period, Carter cranked a shot from the left faceoff circle. Miller slid left to right and stopped it with his pad. A few moments later, Carter deflected a shot from the point. Miller handled it like Ozzie Smith fielding a bad-hop grounder.

As the third period ebbed away, as oxygen became scarcer, it became clearer that one mistake would decide it.

And so Patrick Kaleta charged through the slot as teammate Marc-Andre Gragnani wound up from the left point. Sergei Bobrovsky, playing well in his first NHL playoff game, stopped the shot but let the puck carom out in front. Neither of his defensemen - Matt Carle and Danny Syvret, who was dressed in place of the injured Chris Pronger - did so much as inconvenience Kaleta.

It was much too easy a goal to decide a game this hard-fought and closely played. It did because of Miller.

This series is a long way from over, of course. Until they prove otherwise, these are still the Flyers of the Ultimate Comeback in Boston last May, still the team that never stopped competing until the stealth overtime goal in Game 6 of the Finals.

After their lost month at the end of the regular season, the Flyers were confident they could turn on the playoff intensity again. And they did, although it remains an open question whether playing even with the Sabres qualifies as a major accomplishment. This really is a team the Flyers should dispatch without too much trouble.

But when you consider the need to regroup after that regular-season free fall, and the absence of Pronger, there was plenty to be encouraged about in this game.

It's a shame Syvret lost Kaleta there, because otherwise he was solid in his own playoff debut. He wasn't Pronger, but no one is. The defense was sound in front of Bobrovsky for all but that one lapse.

Captain Mike Richards, whose peculiar absence from Wednesday's practice caused some frantic tweeting and mixed signals from the team, hit the ice at full speed. He hit some Sabres at full speed, too.

James van Riemsdyk and Ville Leino, two guys who occasionally vanished during the season, played strong games. Maybe it was the way Buffalo coach Lindy Ruff chose to defend some of the Flyers' bigger names, but both were physical presences who created scoring chances and drew penalties.

In the second period, those penalties gave the Flyers a five-on-three advantage for 38 seconds. They got some shots. They controlled the puck. They just couldn't score on Miller.

For long stretches, the Flyers seemed dominant. They just couldn't score on Miller.

A year ago, the Flyers opened their unforgettable postseason run with a series against the New Jersey Devils. Going in, there was an obvious goaltending mismatch. The Flyers had Brian Boucher and Michael Leighton. The Devils had Martin Brodeur, whose name should be in boldface on the Stanley Cup.

The Flyers made short work of both the legendary goalie and his team.

So this apparent mismatch - last year's Vezina Trophy winner, Miller, and Bobrovsky - didn't seem like such a big deal. Sure, Miller had carried Team USA to the gold-medal game in the Olympics last year. And sure, he remains one of the game's elite netminders.

But, hey, the Blackhawks won the Cup with a rookie they didn't even bother keeping. Peter Laviolette won a Cup in Carolina a few years ago with a rookie. Maybe the trends meant something. Maybe the days of the shutdown goalie who gets in his opponent's heads were over.

And, hey, maybe they are. Maybe Bobrovsky will become the latest unproven goalie to skate around with the Cup.

But on this one night, Miller reminded everyone what a great goalie can do. He can steal a game.

And, yes, a series.