TAMPA, Fla. — Absent a miracle, Michel Therrien will soon endure his “coach’s torture.”
That’s the way counterpart Jon Cooper labelled the painstaking process of picking through last year’s Tampa-Montreal series for clues about why his team was swept out of the playoffs.
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In the heat of battle Cooper felt that the Lightning had fallen victim to bad luck — and to a certain extent it was true. But in watching the games over and over during the summer he found deeper answers that helped lead “us back to this point right here.”
Now the shoe is on the other foot.
The Canadiens are wondering where the bounces have gone and are struggling to make sense of the 3-0 deficit they were left with after Tyler Johnson’s buzzer beater on Wednesday night.
They’ve done so much right, and struck so much iron in this series, and simply can’t believe that their season might end within 24 hours.
“We played a hell of a game, had a lot of chances, put so many pucks at the net, hit some posts again,” said veteran centre Tomas Plekanec. “It’s a bad way to lose.”
The disappointment is understandable. This was heartbreaking. Johnson’s goal with 1.1 seconds remaining was only the fourth winner in playoff history to be scored so late in regulation.
That it came after Montreal fought so hard for a third-period equalizer and executed so well for 58-plus minutes only added to the heartache.
But this was not merely about bad luck. To dismiss the outcome as that alone is to ignore the 85-second firedrill the Habs scrambled through before Johnson’s winning goal.
They struggled to clear the puck from their end, and to keep it cleared once they did, and allowed Victor Hedman to get around a sprawled-out Andrei Markov for a picture-perfect pass to Johnson.
Montreal looked like a team playing for overtime and it fell a hair short of that goal. What a disaster.
However, just like Cooper a year ago, it was not something Therrien was able to accept in real time. Twenty minutes after the game he could only see the significant number of things his team did right rather than the crucial thing or two it did wrong.
“I don’t want to talk about mistakes because we’re not here to point fingers,” said Therrien. “And that’s the last thing I want to do. I better concentrate about the work ethic that those guys showed all game.”
Explanations were not any easier to come by in the losing dressing room. Johnson got behind P.K. Subban on the winning goal and shovelled the puck past Carey Price. The other Habs players on the ice were Markov, Plekanec, Brendan Gallagher and Max Pacioretty.
“By the time I turned around Johnson was already standing there backdoor,” said Subban. “It’s a tough play. It seemed like they had seven guys on the ice, to be honest with you.”
“I’d have to watch it again, but it happened quick and the puck ended up in our net,” added Gallagher.
“I don’t know,” said Pacioretty.
To make matters worse, the Canadiens only have one night to sleep on it before playing Game 4 on Thursday. They’ve now lost eight straight games to Tampa this season — six of them in the last 58 days — and need to somehow shake the ballooning sense of futility.
To get this series back to the Bell Centre they’ll also need to discover a scoring touch.
They certainly created more traffic on Wednesday and saw Subban, Pacioretty and Jeff Petry rings shots off the post. Gallagher was the only one to beat Ben Bishop and he paid the price with plenty of abuse at the side of the net to do it.
The Lightning, meanwhile, played their worst game of the playoffs — going more than 18 minutes between shots during one stretch — and almost seemed to be in disbelief about coming away with a victory.
“They gave us their best shot,” said Tampa defenceman Anton Stralman. “We definitely got lucky tonight.”
Elements of luck can decide a game, but not an entire series. The Stanley Cup playoffs reveal what you truly are and it isn’t luck that has seen Montreal go 1-for-28 on the power play or melt down in Game 2 or suffer through a major defensive breakdown in the final minute on Wednesday night.
Last spring, the Lightning felt they didn’t deserve to be swept. If it happens to the Habs here, they’ll be saying the same thing.
“I definitely believe in karma and maybe the hockey gods a little bit,” said Lightning captain Steven Stamkos. “We’re definitely getting the majority of the bounces this year, for whatever reason.”
The reasons are out there somewhere. It’s just going to take some cold reflection and the “coach’s torture” to completely unearth them.
