Bruins at loss for words following Game 7 elimination in East 1st Round

BOSTON --The Boston Bruins all stood there, sat there, nearly motionless, stunned. They had spent every bit of themselves trying to make happen what they believed they could and should, what they believed they had earned a shot at after a regular season that was better than any in NHL history.

But it was over, and it was hard to process, and it was unbelievable, as in, not to be believed.

They skated over and away, finally, from the joyful celebration of the Florida Panthers, from the delight and belief and disbelief and happiness, a season unlike any that any of them had ever played gone in a flash, as quickly as Carter Verhaeghe could turn their world upside down.

The Bruins had lost 4-3, 8:35 into an overtime that almost wasn't.

Their season was over.

The magic was gone.

And so they trudged over toward their bench, greeted by their captain, who hugged each one of them, just like he did last season, and sent them down the tunnel and into a summer that they had expected to be months away from starting. Because they had expected to start their summer after a long Stanley Cup Playoff run, after, they hoped, lifting the Stanley Cup themselves. Three times they had been on the brink of eliminating the Panthers after going up 3-1 after Game 4 in the best-of-7 series.

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Instead, the Bruins would embrace their captain, not knowing if it was the final time they would be together on the ice as teammates, not knowing what his future held. Or maybe they did. Either way, Patrice Bergeron, whose hug with Brad Marchand would be long and lasting and whose stick salute to the TD Garden crowd felt an awful lot like a good-bye, wasn't revealing his plans after the game.

It was too raw. Too new.

"Really difficult," Bergeron said. "Obviously, it's not the outcome you want and we're extremely disappointed. Especially with the team we had. It's not where we want to be."

The Bruins had won 65 games in the regular season, a record. They had earned 135 points, a record.

None of it mattered. Much like the two teams they tied and then passed, the 2018-19 Tampa Bay Lightning and the 1995-96 Detroit Red Wings, who had each won 62 games, the 2022-23 Bruins would not win the Stanley Cup. Like the Lightning, they lost in the first round.

"The way it ended didn't matter, how it ended, it just, the season's over," coach Jim Montgomery said. "I guess the words that come to mind right now is disappointment, confusion."

Still, it had ended in breathtaking fashion. After going down 2-0 at 1:14 of the second period, the Bruins slowly clawed their way back, scoring three straight goals, capped by David Pastrnak's clean-up of a Brandon Carlo shot at 4:11 of the third period. They had played with desperation, the way the Panthers had been playing for three games, and they had come back from being down by a goal entering the third, and the Garden was loud, and their destiny was there.

It was in front of them.

"Hundred percent," Pastrnak said, when asked if he thought they would win in that moment.

And they couldn't hold on. Again.

"It hurts," Bergeron said. "It's what it is. You compete hard, you battle all year for that. It's hard."

With exactly one minute remaining in the third period and Panthers goalie Sergei Bobrovsky pulled, Brandon Montour scored his second goal of the night to tie the game and send it to overtime. And then, well, it seemed just a matter of time. The Panthers were relentless in overtime, as they had been in each of the past three elimination games, in Game 5 and Game 6 and Game 7, and then Verhaeghe made it official, after Bruins goalie Jeremy Swayman, starting his first game since April 13 in place of Linus Ullmark, had done all he could to keep the Panthers out of his net.

"I thought Florida was the better team tonight, just being honest," Montgomery said.

He was right.

"They deserve all the credit," Bergeron said. "They got it done. They got the goals when they needed them. There's no excuses. I'm not going to use any excuses on bounces. They did the job. They move on."

The Panthers, ultimately, did not give the Bruins an inch. As soon as Marchand opened the door, failing to convert a breakaway that would have sealed Game 5 and the series with one second remaining in the third period, the Panthers wore the Bruins down, created turnovers -- along with the many the Bruins created themselves -- and pushed and pushed and pushed.

It was a moment Marchand was still lamenting after Game 7.

"It's a game of inches," Marchand said. "I had the game on my stick in Game 5, with a couple of seconds left. Didn't capitalize, and they capitalized on their inches. They dug down one more than we did, one more battle, and that's it."

The last word in Montgomery's post-game press conference was particularly apt.

He had thought that the team wasn't ready for the intensity of the playoffs in the first two games of the series -- they won one and lost one -- but that they ramped up for these final three games. He thought they had dug in, but the Bruins lost all three. They lost the series. They were done.

"And," he said, "that's where it's a little stupefying."

It was. Stupefying. Stunning. Unbelievable.

This team wasn't supposed to be finished with its season until June. And now, here they are, left shaking their heads, left wondering where it all went wrong.