Thursday, 4 a.m.
In the end, they just weren’t good enough. They weren’t fast enough, tough enough or efficient enough.
Their stars were not bright enough. Their offense was not potent enough. Their home ice wasn’t protected enough.
And now, they are done.
The Tampa Bay Lightning were ejected from the NHL playoffs Wednesday night, losing a 6-3 decision to the Florida Panthers. The Bolts, who had the fourth-best home record in the league in the regular season, lost all three games at Amalie Arena.
The Panthers beat the Bolts 4-1 in games in each of the last two seasons.
The Bolts had a rare series lead when Gage Goncalves scored. It didn’t last.
The Panthers came back with goals by Carter Verhaeghe and Anton Lundell.
Nick Paul scored to tie the game at two. Again, the Panthers surged ahead on a goal Aleksander Barkov.
The Lightning tied the game one more time on a goal by Jake Guentzel, who had three goals in the series.
After that, the Panthers took over, getting two goals by Sam Bennett and one by Eetu Luostarinen to win going away. The Panthers scored 23 goals in the series.
The Bolts had trouble getting their stars open the entire series. Leading scorer Nikita Kucherov had four assists but no goals.