Oh, Sunrise: where circumstances prevent even one of the best goalies in the NHL from avoiding a lifetime of headlining blooper reels.
In last night's crucial game against Phoenix, the Panthers were up 3-0 going into the third. Tomas Vokoun was stellar as usual, en route to a 43-stop game, when, sixty seconds left in what had become a 3-2 contest, and with two points on the line, the Coyotes' Radim Vrbata made a routine clearing shot as his team pulled their goalie.
From 105 feet -- inches beyond the center line -- the random whack took a strange hop on the Panther's wonky ice and bounced right into Vokoun's glove to drop into the net.
The Panthers then lost in a shootout.
As usual, the game was equal parts tragic and hilarious and painful; to make matters worse, on Vokoun's next, easy stop, Panthers fans mocked him by cheering as if he'd made an incredible save.
If that doesn't encapsulate everything that we've come to know as recent Florida hockey, well, there's also this:
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"On our ice, anything can happen," said defenseman Bryan McCabe of what's long been called the NHL's worst surface. "The puck was bouncing all night like a tennis ball."
Of course it was. But as mind-numbingly awful as Vokoun's slip-up was, there's absolutely no excuse for fans to boo their own MVP. That the Panthers could even hope to sniff the playoffs is thanks largely to Vokoun, who's been as professional as humanly possible as his team has collapsed around him time and time again for three straight seasons. For heaven's sake, they've even slashed the poor man in the head and left him crumpled and bleeding on the ice, and he still hasn't gone public with any frustration other than noting that crowds were great at the Olympics.
The thanks he gets: endless replays of a fluke goal with his own fans taunting him. Let's blame the transplanted New Yorkers in the crowd, shall we?
Janie Campbell is a Florida native who believes in the pro-set and ballpark hot dogs. Her work has appeared in irreverent sports sites around the internet.
