Tampa Bay Lightning centre Tyler Johnson (9) celebrates with left wing Ondrej Palat, left, and defenceman Victor Hedman after scoring the winning goal at the end of the third period of Game 3 of a second-round NHL Stanley Cup hockey playoff series in Tampa, Fla.Phelan M. Ebenhack/The Associated Press
He stood in his locker in the corner of a dead-quiet room, wearing an angry red welt on the bridge of his nose and an aggrieved, slightly shell-shocked expression.
The Montreal Canadiens' Brendan Gallagher had done everything that can reasonably be expected of an NHL player in the playoffs – scored a goal, chipped in defensively, skated furiously – and it was all erased in the space of 1.1 seconds.
Afterward it was almost as if he couldn't quite believe his team went from pushing for overtime to facing elimination in the time it takes a little black rubber disc to cross a frozen red line.
"For three games I feel like five-on-five we're playing good hockey, we're doing everything we asked, when we're at our best it's the way we're playing [now], we're just finding ways to lose hockey games instead of the other way around," said Gallagher, who capped off his 23rd birthday by being on the ice when the opposition scored the winner. "That's the frustrating part because that's what we've been so good at since I've been here, we've always found ways to win."
"Getting it deep" is one of the hoariest clichés in the hockey canon. It's also true, as the final moments of the Tampa Bay Lightning's thrilling 2-1 triumph over a Habs team that handily outplayed them demonstrated.
Mistakes define hockey games, and in this case some of Montreal's best players contrived to make the fatal one.
As the Habs cleared their own zone with Tampa pressing, centre Tomas Plekanec sent a pass up to linemate Max Pacioretty near the Lightning blue line; the puck bounced off his leg.
Perhaps under different circumstances Plekanec would have taken the time to send the puck behind the Tampa goal, if Pacioretty were luckier he could have batted it past the defence or seen it clip off his skate.
In any case, Tampa's Anton Stralman quickly fired a pass up the boards to Ondrej Palat that Gallagher couldn't intercept, and after some criss-crossing and two more passes, Carey Price was looking at the heavens as Johnson slipped his league-leading eighth goal of the postseason through his pads.
Price was plainly angry after the game, and blamed himself for not stopping the shot – he's being unduly hard on himself, but as he said, "I expect to stop every puck."
The Habs have now lost eight straight meetings to the Bolts; six of them have come in the last 58 days.
Pacioretty said the Habs can draw some satisfaction from badly outshooting the hosts and controlling play for long periods of this game – as they did in a 2-1 double-overtime loss in game one. The inability to grind out a win against this opponent is getting old.
"It keeps happening, obviously there's something going wrong. Whether it's second and third chances around the net, I don't really know. It's all kind of a blur right now, we felt so great, we felt so confident as the game went on, we felt like we had momentum, everyone was rolling," he said. "It's close, but it's not good enough. We've got to play the same way [Thursday] night, except to try and find ways to put the puck in the net."
Pacioretty's frustration was palpable after the game, and while it will come as cold consolation, experiences like this series are something of a rite of passage. Though the Canadiens played in the conference finals a year ago, there are nine new players and their core players remain a youthful group; several of them have been thrust into leadership roles this season.
This is Price's team, but players like Pacioretty and P.K. Subban, first-year alternate captains, are facing their initial acid test as role models for their peers.
On the eve of Game 3, Subban was pointed about the need for everyone to deliver a passionate, committed effort.
Afterward he was pleased the club rose to the occasion, but not satisfied: "It's good to see guys showing up, but you're expected to show up every game."
The series is for all intents and purposes over. But pro athletes aren't in the business of giving up, so it will be up to Subban, Pacioretty, Price and the others to rally the troops for one more charge up the hill in Thursday's fourth game.
"It's a challenge, but listen, not everything is going to go your way every time, it's how you respond … we know we can beat these guys, so who knows, maybe the momentum will shift tomorrow. We've just got to show up, come with the right attitude and it starts there," Subban said. "A lot of it has to do with what you're saying in your head, you have to be positive and believe in yourself that you can do it. In here, we still believe we can win this series. It's a tough break for us today, but I'm happy we don't have a lot of time to dwell on it."
The margins are minuscule in the NHL, which the Habs know all too well from the way they defeated the Ottawa Senators in the first round.
In the words of Subban, who was unable to thwart Johnson's shot after Victor Hedman made a pretty pass to the front of the net past a sliding Andrei Markov, "One costly mistake, all it takes is one turnover and that can be the game. Sometimes you're on the good end of it, sometimes you're on the bad end of it. Today we're on the tough end."
When the Habs took a 3-0 stranglehold on the Sens, it took them three more games to get their clincher.
Tampa will look to the example Montreal provided last season in winning a one-goal game three and then applying the coup de grâce in a hard-fought game four.
The whole thing will surely hinge on an error.