‘We didn’t lose four games’

‘We didn’t lose four games’

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The Florida Panthers advanced to the Stanley Cup Final for the first time in 27 years after eliminating the Carolina Hurricanes in the Eastern Conference Final during Game Four on Wednesday night.

The Panthers, by virtue of winning the first four games of a best-of-seven series, completed what is called a series sweep. As in, the Hurricanes did not win a single game. They got swept.

But don’t tell that to Hurricanes’ head coach Rod Brind’Amour. Rod understands his team’s season is over, but during his post-series press conference, he revealed that he did not believe Carolina was swept or lost all four games in a classical/moral-victory sense.

“That’s the unfortunate part of this is that we’re going to look back and everyone’s going to say you got swept and that’s not what happened,” Brind’Amour said despite what Wikipedia says. “I watched the game. I’m there. We’re in the game. We didn’t lose four games. We got beat but we were right there. This could have went the other way. It could have been four games the other way. Tonight, the way it ended is tough, getting a penalty like that. That’s tough, especially with what was let go. Thats going to sting. Not to take anything away from the other team because they played hard.”

The Hurricanes did in fact lose four games and have been eliminated from the playoffs. There is no loser point in the postseason and you don’t get any extra reward for playing in the sixth-longest game in NHL history.

To Carolina’s credit though, they did join a pretty exclusive club after losing all four games by just one goal, becoming only the seventh team in NHL history to experience such a close “throttling”.

The Hurricanes have now been swept out of the Eastern Conference Finals in all three of their last appearances. They also got beat in four games by the Bruins during the 2018-19 campaign and by the Pittsburgh Penguins during the 2008-09 season.

Carolina scored fewer than 10 goals in each of those three series. The last time they won a Conference Finals series game, Brind’Amour was on the ice as a player and eventually hoisted the Stanley Cup as club captain in 2006.

Perhaps the Canes social media team should share this ChatGPT message with Rod to help him get over the loss. The loss which was a series sweep. The one where they definitely did lose four times in a row.

Screenshot: NHL

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