Tampa, Fla. — And so it ends for the Calgary Flames, just like that. In time, a historical footnote. One more Stanley Cup runner-up, going the way of the Anaheim Mighty Ducks or the Carolina Hurricanes or all the other Cinderella playoff teams, who made wonderful, stirring post-season runs, but came up one game short in the end.
The Flames waged two months of playoff war and met every challenge, except the final one.
After tying an NHL record with 10 road wins, they couldn't get the 11th. Instead, the Tampa Bay Lightning, the No. 1 team in the Eastern Conferece, won Monday's seventh and deciding game of the Stanley Cup final 2-1 to bring the Stanley Cup to Florida for the first time in National Hockey League history.
It was clear, over the past few games, that the Flames - a team which relies on a relentless non-stop work ethic - were running on empty. Of course, coach Darryl Sutter denied it and denied it and then he denied it all over again - or he did until Monday night, when he finally came clean.
"In the end, we ran out of gas," said Sutter. "Winning Game 5 actually hurt us more than it helped us because of the injuries we sustained. The longer the series, the tougher it was going to be. We tried to summon all we could in terms of energy. In the end, they had more legs than we did."
Jarome Iginla, a Conn Smythe candidate if the Flames had won the Stanley Cup, was shut down by the Lightning's swarming defence for the second game in a row. Goaltender Miikka Kiprusoff, so stunningly good for the Flames from the moment he arrived in a mid-November trade, wasn't as sharp either.
Right winger Shean Donovan, a mainstay up front because of his speed, was in the press box for the second game in a row, after spraining the medial collateral ligament in his left knee. Defenceman Robyn Regehr played, despite a bad ankle that Sutter described as either broken or sprained, he wasn't sure which.
Ultimately, the spirit was willing, right to the end ...
"They were playing on heart," said Sutter. "That's all they had left."
Sadly, so many Flames' players have gone down this road once before - Rhett Warrener, Dave Lowry, Martin Gelinas. They know only too well the difference between circling the ice with the Stanley Cup held aloft - as Lightning captain Dave Andreychuk and his teammates did last night - and the bitter, hard-to-swallow alternative.
It will be a summer of soul-searching and pondering opportunities lost. Last Friday, the Flames led the series 3-2 and held two chances to eliminate the Lightning. If they'd done so, they would have become the first team to defeat four division champions en route to the championship.
Instead, they will wonder: Did they lose the Cup Game 4, a 1-0 overtime defeat, in which they gave up the only goal early on a five-on-three power play?
Or perhaps in Game 6, when it looked for a time as if Gelinas had won it with a controversial play that was ultimately ruled no goal?
No, ultimately, the series was lost in Game 7, when Ruslan Fedotenko scored twice - once on the power play, once at even strength - to put the finishing touches on a game in which the Flames put every last bit of energy into a third-period rally, only to come up one goal short.
Fedotenko's second goal, which turned out to be the back breaker, came after a dazzling stickhandling display by the Lightning's Vincent Lecavalier.
Lecavalier cycled the puck down low in the Flames' zone, spinning off Steve Montador's attempted check twice, before coming out of the corner with the puck.
Momentarily slowed by Montador, Lecavalier had the presence of mind to kick the puck up to his stick and then threw a no-look pass to Fedotenko, standing in exactly the same place as he was for his opening goal. Fedotenko's wrist shot went off the heel of goaltender Miikka Kiprusoff's glove and deflected in to give the Lightning a 2-0 lead.
Craig Conroy's power-play goal with 10:39 to play in the third brought the Flames to within one and they pressed hard for the tying goal the rest of the way, but couldn't get a second shot past goaltender Nikolai Khabibulin. Jordan Leopold was there, in perfect position to punch home a rebound with about five minutes to go, but Khabibulin came across the crease and made a game-saving stop on his right pad.
The Flames were not looking for sympathy afterwards. Even after Saturday's controversial finish, they knew they had one chance to play for the championship.
Tampa's Brad Richards, the Conn Smythe Trophy winner, was asked: What made the Lightning better than Calgary?
"Better's a tough word," answered Richards. "You win by one goal in seven games. They played unbelievable. It could have gone either way. Basically, it was just the last-man standing. We might have won one more battle or got one more big save. There are so many little things you can break it down to. Two teams separated by one goal in seven games. That's the way it should be."
So the Flames go into the history books the same way the '94 Canucks did - hailed for a remarkable ride that was punctuated by a bitter disappointment at the end.
In time, there may be a softening of the disappointment, but on Monday night, there were no silver linings, no moral victories, no solace from coming oh-so-close close to a little hockey miracle.
Only the bitter realization that they came this close and failed to win it all.
