TORONTO – Through red, heavy eyes, after 27 minutes of fruitless work, Aaron Ekblad answered questions in quiet, sombre, short sentences.
“We had our chances,” the defenceman lamented. He’d rung a post.
At a volume equally tempered, terrific losing goaltender Roberto Luongo — who had been quipping about his all-carbs diet only a few hours earlier — tried to fit words into disappointment.
The legend sighed before fighting through what sounded like a lump in his throat.
“This one hurts,” he began.
“We didn’t have any urgency in the first. With a team like that on the other side, if we’re not playing our game, they’re going to make you pay. That’s what happened.”
What stings sharpest is that Wednesday’s 4-3 loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs meant everything to the visitors and essentially nothing, beyond milestones and Carlton the Bear hugs, to their inconvenient hosts.
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Leafs coach Mike Babcock described it as playoff-style hockey, but on an emotional level, it only felt that way in one dressing room.
“They’ve been giving it their all here for the past few months, trying to catch a break, trying to make our own breaks, and we’ve been a real good hockey team,” said Florida coach Bob Boughner. His players had won 20 of 27 since Christmas, striving for the improbable.
“I thought we beat ourselves tonight.”
The Panthers outscored their high-powered opposition 3-1 over the course of the game’s final 46 minutes but failed to show up for the first 14.
Toronto’s game operations crew exercised restraint by not playing “Sweet Georgia Brown” during long stretches of the first frame as Mitchell Marner & Co. rolled around in the offensive zone, creating quality chance after Grade-A scoring opportunity.
“Everything that could go bad did go bad,” Boughner said.
Luongo was forced to make two jaw-dropping saves on Tyler Bozak and slammed the door on James van Riemsdyk on a breakaway. Momentum-turning-calibre stops, yet the momentum waited forever to turn.
Babcock called the losing goalie unbelievable before he called him phenomenal. Luongo himself says he’s never felt more on top of his game from a technical standpoint. He’ll be 39 when the playoffs start, with or without him.
“He’s one of the best goalies in the world. He did his job tonight,” Ekblad said. “We didn’t.”
Lava-handed Marner scored on his own rebound to dial his career-best point streak to 10. Auston Matthews snapped his 30th, making the Maple Leafs the first NHL club with three 30-goal shooters, and Patrick Marleau registered his 13th 25-goal season. All within 11 minutes of each other.
“We knew they’re a desperate, desperate team,” Babcock said. “They were playing well. We thought we could jump on them early and get going, and we did.”
Periods 2 and 3 were a different tale.
Led by two goals, a drawn 5-on-3 power play and eight shots (plus three more attempts) all from winger Jonathan Huberdeau, who’s already set career highs in goals and assists, the Panthers showed the type of effort in line with a team that describes every one its last nine games as a must-win.
“Started playing hockey. That’s pretty much it,” Luongo said.
“They were pretty much doing whatever they wanted in the first period. They got three goals. I would’ve maybe liked to have stopped one of them. I dunno. I don’t have much to say after this one, guys. I’m sorry.”
Playing like you have nothing to lose gets difficult when suddenly you do.
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Don’t bury the Cats in the backyard just yet.
They still hold a game in hand over the New Jersey Devils (winners of three straight), whom they now trail by three points.
The number-crunchers still give the Panthers a 40 per cent shot to make the dance, despite a restless schedule that includes two matches against the mighty Bruins.
Florida can take another step toward completing the league’s great second-half push Thursday in Ottawa. There’s still time to swap deflation for elation, but the size of the task is weighing on them.
“Tonight was a big loss for us, a hard loss to accept,” Boughner said, “but there’s no time to dwell on it. We have to come back and fire it up.”
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