One of my favourite novels is Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity, which you might know better because of the John Cusack film adaptation. In it, the main character finds his actions unconsciously steered by his memories of a bad past breakup. He’s haunted by it. In many ways, you can argue that the Calgary Flames are still haunted by their oh-so-close 2004 Stanley Cup run. The thing that haunts them isn’t the Game 6 (non-)goal by Martin Gelinas, but the games that preceded it.
The 2004 Flames didn’t win the Stanley Cup because they ran out of players in the system who were able to play NHL-caliber hockey.