TAMPA, Fla. — When the clock his zero on Sunday night inside Benchmark International Arena, the faces of the Tampa Bay Lightning players were all expressing disbelief.
“I think it’s just a lot of blank stares,” Tampa Bay coach Jon Cooper said. “Everybody is wondering how that one got away from us.”
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The Lightning lost 2-1 in a do-or-die Game 7 against the Montreal Canadiens.
“Sometimes you win the game and not the score,” Cooper added.
Tampa Bay was unlucky in many ways — outshooting the Canadiens 29-9 but allowing a pair of fluky goals.
“The Hockey Gods have been in my corner many, many times, and tonight they’re in the other corner. That’s what happens,” Cooper said.
“It sucks. Not much you can do,” Lightning forward Brandon Hagel said. “You give up zero shots in the second period. Three shots in the third period. And you lose a hockey game. You can’t look at one guy in the room and say he didn’t do his thing. Yeah, I guess we didn’t score more goals, obviously. It’s a tough feeling, but that’s the reality of hockey. It’s Game 7, you lose, you’re out.”
That’s now four straight years with four first-round exits in the Stanley Cup playoffs. This team was supposed to be different. So what was missing with another first-round exit?
“I thought maybe throughout the series we probably weren’t at our best for some games,” Lightning forward Anthony Cirelli said. “We were giving up chances and looks. Just dialed in for seven games each and every night. We can probably dissect and think about it a lot during the summer about how we let it get away.”
It wasn’t supposed to happen against, especially to a team with Stanley Cup aspirations every season.
“Yeah, it sucks, you don’t get any younger, that’s for sure,” Hagel said. “I got one goal on my mind every single year…I just want to win.”
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