Tiny, Happy People (holding Sticks)

After a bizarre game of pond hockey that was missing only snowbanks for boards, an old tennis ball for a puck and a golden retriever in one of the nets, Buffalo Sabres coach Lindy Ruff should have stepped up to the microphone last Friday night and thanked all the little people. Bite-sized center Derek Roy (admittedly 5'8 3/4", but he prefers 5'9") had two goals and three assists; combative Daniel Bri�re (5'8 3/4", he says, "but I think I'm taller than Derek") set up the tying goal with 10.7 seconds remaining; and Chris Drury (officially 5'10", but like the start times in movie listings, that's an approximation) ended the 7-6 mess against the Ottawa Senators with a goal 18 seconds into overtime of Game 1 of the Eastern Conference semifinals. � If the Sabres go on to win the Stanley Cup--Buffalo led the Senators two games to none after a 2-1 win on Monday night--they will have to pass on going to Disney World because half of their stars are too small to go on the rides. (O.K., enough. There's a moratorium on short wisecracks. No hockey jockey references. No power-play units called the wee five. Promise.)

The NHL, of course, still has ample room for big and tall. The average player, according to league statistics, is 6'1", 204 pounds; the average Sabre is 6'1", 199. (Thirty years ago, when Andr� Dupont roamed the Philadelphia Flyers' blue line, the Broad Street Bullies defenseman was nicknamed Moose because he was 6 feet, 200. Now he wouldn't even qualify as an elk.) But with the crackdown on restraining fouls, many players driving the bus toward the Cup can barely see over the steering wheel. (So much for the moratorium.) "The new NHL ... is a mobile man's game," says Sabres defenseman Jay McKee, who is listed at 6'4" but answers to 6'3". "It's not the biggest guy. It's the competitive one who's the most skilled." So to summarize, it's not the size of the dog in the fight but the size of the fight in the dog. As the playoffs progressed in the second round, the NHL was awash in tiny, happy people.

THE CAPTAIN OF LILLIPUT

Daniel Bri�re is happy. Not because of his three goals and eight assists in eight playoff games through Monday, but because for the first time since his NHL debut in 1997-98 his team sent an opponent--the Brobdingnagian Flyers--home for the summer. "We kept hearing [ Philadelphia coach] Ken Hitchcock and some of their players say that the longer the series went, the tougher it would be on us because they could wear us down," says Bri�re, who alternates as team captain with Drury, who is known as Little Bulldog. "We were smaller, but we proved we can play with the big boys."

On a team built to thrive under the NHL's new rules, Bri�re is showcasing his freewheeling style--a mix of swerving skating, feistiness and creativity--in front of friends and families and against his hometown team. He grew up, if not tall, five minutes from downtown Ottawa, across the Ontario border in what is now Gatineau, Que. He lied about his height throughout junior hockey, sometimes listing himself as 5'10" ("That double digit seemed important, but 6 feet was a little too obvious," he says), but the fudging stopped long ago. He still hears jibes-- Senators winger Dany Heatley, who played with Bri�re in Switzerland during the lockout, says his friend "looks 12"--and the mean-spirited ones are stored in his memory's hard drive.

"Being a smaller guy actually helped my career," he says. "That's been my motivation: to prove people wrong. When I was drafted, I saved the newspaper clippings with experts saying how I'd never make it. If I'd been 6'1" or 6'2", if everyone had been telling me, 'You're good, you're going to make it,' I don't know if I would have had the drive."

Working to improve his game, Bri�re has left no stone unturned. From 2002 through '04 he lifted boulders as part of his summer training with Hugo Girard, a powerful link in the historic chain of Quebec strongmen and a mainstay on those loopy competitions that ESPN2 televises at odd hours. Bri�re would do the farmer's walk (carrying heavy weights in each hand), tote fire hydrants across parking lots and flip monster tractor tires "as big as me." He credits Girard with developing his strength and, by extension, his scoring. In his first 190 pre-boulder-lifting NHL games, Bri�re averaged .53 of a point per game; in the subsequent 212 postboulder games, he averaged .85. This season he had 58 points in 48 games, a 1.2 average that ranked 11th in the NHL. If you're counting, and Bri�re isn't, that computes to about .83 of a point per inch.

THE LINEMATES

Brian Gionta and Scott Gomez are happy. The New Jersey Devils linemates were the NHL's most productive pair during the winning streak of 15 games that ended last Saturday against Carolina as, ahem, 5'10" Ray Whitney scored twice in the Hurricanes' 6-0 rout in the series opener. In those 15 wins Gionta and Gomez combined for 50 points and 20 goals. "It's awesome playing with [ Gomez]," the 27-year-old Gionta says. "We've known each other since we were 15 and can read off each other's game."

The reportedly 5'11" Gomez (yeah, right, who's doing this height reporting? Jayson Blair?), who looks to be 5'9" and hunches as he skates, is the passer. Gionta is the triggerman. For a rightwinger purportedly 5'7"--his father, Sam, is 5'4"; his mother, Penny, about 5-foot--Gionta is fearless storming the net and playing in traffic. "He's always been that good around the net," Gomez says. "He's like a four-foot John LeClair." The Pittsburgh Penguins' bruising LeClair was a classic power forward in his heyday, while Gionta is more of a darter, spinning in and out of holes, engaging in an elaborate game of hide-and-seek with defensemen. And with the new rule interpretations, defenders have to play fair. After scoring 37 goals total in his first three NHL seasons, Gionta pumped in a team-record 48 this season (his all-important points-per-inch index was 1.3), and like Gomez, he added two goals and four assists in the first-round sweep of the New York Rangers.