When the Florida Panthers scored on Sunday night, the Boston Bruins were just 59 seconds away from the Eastern Conference playoffs.
In the final minute of regulation, Boston fans were stunned by Brandon Montour’s late 6-on-5 goal that knotted the game and forced overtime. Carter Verhaeghe’s goal caused Boston to lose 4-3 and resulted in their elimination from the Stanley Cup playoffs.
For fans of the Bruins, Game 7 was an exciting ride.
This season, the Bruins had only dropped 20 games in all, five of those losses coming at the hands of the Panthers. Just over a minute into the second period, Florida put the Bruins behind 2-0 as they demonstrated their dominance early in the game.
During a power play, David Krejci scored his first goal of the postseason, beating Sergei Bobrovsky’s blocker to trim the lead to one in the second period. But the Bruins struggled with careless passes, errors, and giveaways for the remainder of the half, trailing 2-1 at the half.
It appeared that the momentum had changed when the puck dropped to begin the third period.
Tyler Bertuzzi’s goal tied the game at two minutes in the first quarter as the Bruins outplayed the Panthers. All of a sudden, this resembled the Boston squad that finished the regular season with an NHL record 65 wins.
With fifteen minutes left, the score was 3-2 thanks to a goal by David Pastrnak off a long rebound off a shot by Brandon Carlo, giving the Bruins their first lead of the contest. It appeared as though the group had done enough to win Game 7.
The Bruins led for fourteen minutes, but in the last sixty seconds, Montour defeated Boston goalie Jeremy Swayman to equalize the score at three.
Swayman stopped Carter Verhaeghe in midair and stopped a breakaway attempt by Matthew Tkachuk to keep the Bruins in the game, but Verhaeghe ended up winning. Boston’s epic season was terminated by his goal at 8:35 of overtime.
The fact that this was the final game of captain Patrice Bergeron’s contract left Bruins supporters in disbelief.
