Montreal Canadiens goalie Carey Price leads his teammates back to the dressing room after losing 5-2 to the Ottawa SenatorsPaul Chiasson/The Canadian Press
At this time of the year, the NHL standings become especially pitiless.
The Ottawa Senators were always a longshot to make the playoffs, but a rousing Western road swing was like a puff of oxygen on their faintly-glowing hopes.
A head-to-head loss this week to Boston, the only team Ottawa can realistically hope to catch, lowered their odds of making the playoffs to 14.7 per cent (per Sportsclubstats.com).
Routing the hated rival Montreal Canadiens 5-2 on their home ice made up no ground and only improved their lot marginally – the Bruins' shootout win over Tampa won't count in the tie-breaker column.
This result did provide some good vibes and jocularity, however.
When defenceman Erik Karlsson – imperious on this night, scorer of three points including the back-breaking goal just as a four minute power-play to Montreal expired – was asked what he told running mate Marc Methot after the stay-at-home specialist's first goal of the year, he said: "I asked him if he kept the puck."
Karlsson might as well laugh, the Sens aren't dead yet.
Coach Dave Cameron has been preaching a simple gospel in the past few weeks, urging his club to play an up-tempo, counter-attacking style and to stick with the plan no matter the circumstance.
"We stuck to it," he said of Thursday's effort, which saw Ottawa go down 2-0 in the first period to a pair of Max Pacioretty scores then roar back to score five unanswered goals against a netminder who hadn't allowed more than four in his last 40 games.
It likely won't matter in the end – Boston has a seven-point lead and Ottawa has only 16 games in which to amass four more wins than the Bruins – but for at least one night, everything seemed possible.
"The only thing we can control is ourselves and we take it game by game. We won tonight and just move on to the next one; can't really control anything else than that and we know we're going to have to win a lot of games to even have a chance but we're not worrying about that right now, we just play a game at a time and (Friday on Long Island) we play again so right back at it," Karlsson said.
The mood, then, is buoyant.
"I think over the past couple of weeks we've shown that we're a good team and we know what we need to do to win games. And if we stick to that hopefully the result is going to be the one we want, and at the same time we can't look too far ahead and we can't dwell on past games," the Sens' captain said.
The team with something to strive for played like it, the club that sits atop of the standings – for now – did not.
The Habs have now lost five of their last six games, more or less mirroring the recent swoon by the Nashville Predators, and while they are tied atop the NHL standings with the New York Rangers and Tampa Bay Lightning, it's probably not reasonable to expect it to last.
Carey Price has been something close to miraculous for the Habs this season, so his team can be forgiven for thinking they were home and dry after hanging a couple of quick markers on Ottawa goalie Andrew Hammond.
But there's a reason the 27-year-old has yet to lose a regulation start in his first taste of the NHL. The man known as the Hamburglar is pretty good at his job (he's now 8-0-1 and is the first goalie since 1938 to allow two or fewer goals in his first nine starts, and just the fourth in history).
When Montreal tried to reply to Ottawa's push – to match their hunger – there wasn't enough in reserve.
The standings say they are tops in the league, but it's not readily apparent from watching them on the ice.
The 27-year-old Price, who yielded five times on 28 shots, said "we're not catching anyone by surprise anymore," and while his stick-smashing days are largely behind him, there is little doubt he was prodigiously miffed after this one.
Witness this post-game exchange.
Reporter: "Are you at all concerned you've lost five of the last six?"
Price: "We're not, no."
Five-second pause.
Another reporter: "Is there a reason why you're not?"
Price: "Because we're at the top of the standings."
Technically correct, but almost certainly temporary (remember: the math is especially unforgiving this time of year).
Athletes often talk about the importance of facing down adversity, which is probably why there was relative calm in the Habs' room after the game (though Price was tetchy, he wasn't unreasonably so.)
Defenceman P.K. Subban, whose rocket point shot led to the Habs' opening goal, said "it's an 82-game season . . . we're going to go through some down times, it's fine."
Better now than in April, certainly.
"This is where we really need to stick together," said Subban, adding "I'm not worried about my team, about our team here."
That's subject to change if the Habs don't show they can play to the standard of their increasingly desperate opponents.
Failure to do so will be exposed. The standings throw off a harsh light.