Brandon Montour played for nearly an hour yesterday (which is historic)

Did you finish last night’s game between the Panthers and Hurricanes? If so, hats off to you.

With the game ending in the fourth overtime, it’s clear that some soldiers were lost along the way. That’s only to be expected, since a 140-minute game is… long.

Imagine playing all that time and not winning. It must be a horrible feeling.

To all those who are reading this morning with their eyes greasy from fatigue, good morning. Make yourself (another?) coffee: my article isn’t going anywhere in the meantime.

Speaking of coffee, I imagine it will be very popular with players from both teams this morning. After all, it’s crazy how tired the protagonists of both teams must be.

I hope the fathers have seen their children let them sleep in.

I can’t help thinking about the goalkeepers. After all, Frederik Andersen and Sergei Bobrovsky played the entire game (140 minutes… minus 17 seconds) in the sixth-longest playoff game in history.

If Sergei Bobrovsky loses 15 to 20 pounds in every game, can we make a rule of three and say that yesterday he lost over 40 pounds? I don’t think so, but the question remains.

Note that the goalies made 57 saves on 60 shots (Andersen) and 63 saves on 65 shots (Bobrovsky), which is simply mind-boggling. To have an efficiency rate of .950 and .969, that impresses me.

Bob has been living up to expectations in recent games. He and Matthew Tkachuk are by far the Panthers’ most valuable players.

But it’s not just the goalies who have been working hard. After all, the skaters also looked out of breath in the final periods of the game, which is perfectly normal.

After all, some guys played… a lot.

According to the NHL website, Brandon Montour played 57:56. That puts him in the top-10 of skaters who have played the most minutes in a playoff game, which is no mean feat.

And he’s not the only one to have played big minutes. In fact, only two Panthers players played less than 24 minutes over the course of the game, which says a lot about the game, which was very long indeed.

Brent Burns, who is about 150 years old, played for over 54 minutes. I don’t know if he was ready for that, and I don’t know where he got the energy to do it, but let’s just say this morning he must be discovering muscles he didn’t know he had.

He must be feeling old this morning.

The fact remains that the Panthers have still found a way to win on the road (sixth time in a row in these 2023 series) and that the club is resilient. After all, after the disallowed goal, the club didn’t give up.

Is this the Matthew Tkachuk effect?

Two full games later, the first game of the first series is behind us. Tonight, we’re going to wish ourselves a duel that will end in 60 minutes, because… because. It seems obvious to me, even though it’s Friday.

I wonder how different it would have been if the game had been played in Québ… ah no, my mistake. I got the file mixed up. It must be fatigue, I suppose.

In bursts

– Interesting.

– Just because Evgenii Dadonov is performing in Dallas doesn’t mean we should throw rocks at Kent Hughes. [RDT]

– Blue Jays defeat.

– Why are the Senators popular? [98.5 FM]

– What will the club look like in 2023?