The Florida Panthers 2021-22 season came to a frustrating close as the ice-cold club fell to the Tampa Bay Lightning 2-0 at Amalie Arena.
Despite playing their best game of the series, and perhaps of the playoffs, the Cats just couldn’t find the back of the net. They peppered Andrei Vasilevskiy with 49 shots, but none went in.
Vasilevskiy blanked the Panthers over the last five periods of the series. An ignominious end for the NHL’s best regular season offense, one that racked up a franchise record 337 goals in 82 games.
A perfect summation of the series came around eight minutes into the second period, when Carter Verhaeghe snapped a wrist shot by Vasilveskiy that caught the left post, rode the cross bar, and then clanked off the right post.