ANAHEIM >> They lost in regulation and in the end did so convincingly, at least on the scoreboard, surrendering two empty net goals.
But NHL playoff games don’t have to go to overtime to have the feel of sudden death.
“It was just like it ended abruptly, you know?” forward Andrew Cogliano said Thursday. “Why it hurt so much is, in Game 6, we probably played one of our better games of the playoffs. When it ended, you couldn’t believe it.”
Three days later and the Ducks were still sorting through their bruised emotions and battered bones, fighting to accept their season-shuttering 6-3 Western Conference finals loss Monday in Nashville.
It was stunning, honestly, seeing the dazed look that lingered in the eyes of a group of professional athletes trained to coldly move on, always, no matter the depth of the adversity.
Stunning and refreshing, too, these Ducks so committed to the same kind of cause that, in the previous four postseasons, ended with Game 7 home losses of varying degrees of pathetic.
A consistent level of investment, even three rounds into the playoffs, isn’t always a certainty, either. As recently as after the team’s Game 5 loss Saturday, captain Ryan Getzlaf lamented the Ducks’ lacking “compete level.”
But anyone who thought this team was ready for its season to end would have been knocked as foggy Thursday as the Ducks themselves.
More than a couple players appeared to be genuinely floored that they were here for exit interviews with club officials rather than for practice with their teammates.
“Right now, it’s too early,” Ryan Kesler said. “I’m sure I’m going to sit and think about it and lose sleep over it. Right now, I’m just trying to digest it.”
Yeah, digest it, like a pound cake made of crushed pavement.
Kesler just finished his 13th NHL season. He will turn 33 before he plays his next game. He has been a major award winner in this league and annually is among the NHL leaders in boos generated in enemy arenas.
Yet, this hardened villain so popular for being unpopular still was struggling to grasp the rotten role into which he and the Ducks had been cast by the Predators.
“There’s just something about this loss that stung more, especially the way we played that game,” Kesler said. “We left everything out there.”
Everything and perhaps even more. Kesler called Game 6 “the toughest loss I’ve taken in my career,” and this is a man who, as a member of the Vancouver Canucks in 2011, lost Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final.
That’s how much this defeat continued to resonate and echo around here, the disappointment managing to fill a Honda Center that was otherwise vacant all afternoon.
Sports has a standing 8-count and a 10-minute cooling off period and enough TV timeouts for a Starbucks Venti to compose itself.
But the Ducks will be dealing with the effects of this bitter playoff elimination well into a summer that already will be longer than they would have preferred.
“I was in shock that the season was over because we didn’t feel like it needed to be,” Cogliano said of sitting in the losing locker room at Bridgestone Arena. “We felt that we had more to give.”
Not that the Ducks didn’t give plenty in reaching the end of a conference final that left both teams flinching at shadows and rubbing away pain.
Along with all the injuries that were known publicly, the Ducks disclosed a few others Thursday, including significant ones to defensemen Hampus Lindholm and Sami Vatanen.
“Sami needs surgery,” General Manager Bob Murray explained. “He’s deciding where to do it.”
For a moment, I thought Murray was talking about Vatanen being so injured that he was deciding what part of his body to have operated on first.
That didn’t seem too ridiculous, given that we just witnessed a series in which the Ducks’ Josh Manson was penalized for high-sticking even though the blood left on the ice belonged to Manson and was the result of a Nashville high stick.
Turns out, Murray was talking about geography and not biology, Vatanen undecided about the venue for his upcoming shoulder surgery.
“Playoff hockey isn’t the easiest hockey,” Manson said. “I haven’t been in many playoff series, but it was tough on the body. After every game, you’re bumped and bruised. It did take a toll, but everybody goes through it.”
It’s just that not everybody ends up in the same place afterward. In this instance, the Predators ended up standing, while the Ducks slumped, sagging beneath the weight of frustration and fatigue.
Now, all the banners and car flags will trickle away, as well, disappearing as certainly as a roomful of well-intentioned playoff beards.
“I can’t ask for anything more as far as giving what they had this year,” Murray said. “They were close. They played their hearts out. In that way, I’m really proud of them. They cared.”
These Ducks definitely did. Three days later, they still do.
jmiller@scng.com
