“It was a tough pill to swallow.”
“I was distraught.”
“I don’t even know how to describe it. It felt like it wasn’t real.”
Those were the thoughts that hit Brian Pinho, Jack Devine and Cooper Black, respectively, in the immediate aftermath of Charlotte’s early exit from the playoffs on Saturday.
Two days later, as the team filed into an ice-less Bojangles Coliseum for exit interviews, that cloud of disappointment still lingers.
“You don’t really have a doubt until it happens,” said Ben Steeves. “Some things just went wrong.”
“That one stings,” said Mike Benning. “It hurts and we wish we were still going.”
This Checkers squad enjoyed a strong regular season, registering the same number of wins as a season ago. Unfortunately for them that wasn’t quite enough to secure a similar first-round bye - putting Charlotte in a best-of-three first-round series.
“Those two out of three series can be challenging,” said captain Trevor Carrick. “Anything can happen. I thought we were playing good hockey to be honest with you.”
“I think for us it’s tough,” said Cooper Black. “You get in those best-of-three series and anything can happen. We end up losing a game and they get some momentum and then Game 3 is a coin flip."
Game 1 of the first-round series saw the Checkers throttle the Thunderbirds by a staggering score of 8-1.
With a chance to end the series two days later in Game 2, the Checkers stumbled to a 5-2 defeat - setting up a winner-take-all Game 3 and breathing new life into Springfield.
“I’d be lying if I said in game two I wasn’t a little disappointed from a compete stand point,” said head coach Geordie Kinnear. “It wasn’t up to what we normally do as a group.
“You want to expect to win, but you actually have to do the little things necessary to be able to win. In Game 2 there was an expectation to win without doing all the dirty, necessary, gritty, toughness type stuff to win.”
Saturday’s do-or-die Game 3 saw the Checkers carry a 1-0 lead through 40 minutes, but the Thunderbirds found the equalizer in the third and ultimately the game winner late in overtime.
“We hit a lot of posts, their goalie started playing well, it's just the way it happens,” said Steeves. “Best-of-three can be a tough series. We didn’t take advantage of it.”
“Obviously we thought we had the group to do it,” said Benning. “It was there, it’s overtime, it’s a toss up. They got their chance and made the most of it.”
The abrupt end to the season hit especially hard for a group that had grown increasingly close as a unit.
“The group of guys was amazing,” said Pinho. “It was one of the most fun years I’ve had in my pro career.”
“Everyone had higher hopes and higher expectations,” said Wilmer Skoog. “Going through stuff together and then this - you want to end in a fun way, but we couldn’t do that.”
As is typically the case in the AHL, there was a lot of roster upheaval from last season to this season. But even with new faces on the roster, this first-round exit is certainly a far cry from the run to the Calder Cup Finals a year prior.
“It’s challenging when you go that deep with such a good group of guys and then you come back and have so much turnover,” said Carrick. “I think the biggest thing is we were obviously a little bit younger this year and might have lacked some experience, especially this time of year. Having 10 rookies - they were phenomenal throughout the year, but when you get to these higher stakes games I think it shows.”
“I think for us - or maybe for me - I think this year hurt more than last year,” said Black. “Because last year we took a stab at it, it felt like even though we didn’t win the whole thing we still used the opportunity to the fullest and gave it a good run. This year is such a disappointing end because I think our team was just as good, if not better.”
It’s a bitter note to head off into the summer on, but the Checkers are determined to use this disappointment as fuel.
“It will definitely be motivating,” said Pinho. “I think the whole team is going to come back with a bit of a fire under our tails.”
“We have a long offseason here that we can use to regroup, refocus,” said MacKenzie Entwistle. “Everyone can build their game and get to a better place. All the young guys that are coming back, they understand the system, they understand what we preach here.”
The prevailing belief is that this gut-punch feeling can be a catalyst to something great.
“You look at the team last year, we made that run - the year before they got eliminated early,” said Entwistle. “These are just lessons that we have to learn.”
“You need the education,” said Kinnear. “[In the 2024 playoffs] we were one of the hottest teams down the stretch and we ran into a hot goalie. [Hartford Wolf Pack goalie Dylan] Garand came in, we lost the second game in overtime and then he got a shutout in the third game. That was probably a driving force to our run last year. All the meetings we had with the leadership group that year was a driving force to us being successful the following year. Bottom line is you have to go through the bumps and the bruises as a group - we’re never going to be the same, but the key guys - to understand the feeling.”
Even with the outlook of using this as a learning opportunity, make no mistake - the disappointment of an early exit hangs heavy for the Checkers.
“I’m a win or lose guy,” said Kinnear. “We lost. It’s got to drive you if you’re a competitive person.”
“We had a great season, but it’s a tough ending,” said Tobias Bjornfot. “Hard one to swallow. Heartbreaking.”
