David Pastrnak, David Krejci and Patrice Bergeron have all played their entire career with the Boston Bruins — but the team could look a lot different next year after a stunning first-round collapse against the Florida Panthers.
Pastrnak shared an emotional response to the fact that Sunday night could have been his last game playing with one or both of countryman Krejci and longtime teammate Bergeron.
“Obviously, it's very emotional,” Pastrnak said of the possibility of saying goodbye to Bergeron and Krejci, according to The Athletic's Fluto Shinzawa.
“You never know. You can't stop time. You think about yourself as well. The career goes by fast. This one's definitely going to hurt. As time goes the next couple weeks, months, it's going to be more painful.”
Brad Marchand echoed that sentiment.
“It's tough. We were hoping to make a good, long run here all together. It's tough for everybody. We obviously expected much different results this year and this series. Unfortunately, that didn't happen. This one is going to hurt for a long time.”
The questions will now begin in Boston for a team that absolutely dominated the regular season but couldn't find a way to close out the Panthers after leading the series three games to one and looking to have one foot in the second round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
It took Florida until Game 81 to even qualify for the postseason, while Boston looked poised to win the President's Trophy before the season was halfway over.
“The Panthers deserved to win. The Bruins, in retrospect, were paper tigers. They could not meet the gravity of the situation,” wrote Shinzawa. “So they were left to cry, hug, think about what went wrong and wonder about what comes next. They do not have answers.”
It truly is one of the most stunning playoff upsets in NHL history, and David Pastrnak and the Bruins are now left with questions that will simply be impossible to answer this offseason.
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