TAMPA - Goaltender Nikolai Khabibulin walked out of the side door of the locker room late Monday night just as he has done after every game for the past month.
He searched for his loved ones, graciously stopped for a couple of reporters who were camping out to talk to him and spoke in his usual, unassuming, quiet tones.
But there was a difference Monday. For the first time in eight games, Khabibulin was asked not to explain his brilliance, but account for his failure.
He finally bent. He finally broke. He finally was beaten.
After stringing together a 9-1 record with a 1.00 goals-against average, something Flyers coach Ken Hitchcock twice called "incredible," Khabibulin finally looked human. He gave up four goals on 12 shots in 26 minutes and was pulled with the Lightning trailing 4-0.
"No sense scarring him up any more," Lightning goalie John Tortorella said about the hook. "He has played a lot of hockey for us ... By no means was it taking him out for his play. It was one of those nights for our whole team."
But it started with Khabibulin giving up his first soft goal of the postseason. Flyers power forward John LeClair is a prolific scorer, but his stoppable unscreened wrist shot from the left faceoff circle less than two minutes in squeezed between Khabibulin's pads and sent a message that Khabibulin's well finally had run dry.
"I should stop that shot from there," Khabibulin said.
He gave up two more goals in the first period and finally was relieved by John Grahame when he let in another so-so goal to Vladimir Malakhov at 6:02 of the second.
"Habby is not going to stop them all," Lightning defenseman Dan Boyle said.
But this postseason, it seemed like he has. Going into the game, Khabibulin had faced 268 shots and stopped 258 of them.
"We can't rely (just) on Habby," Lightning captain Dave Andreychuk said. "Obviously, he has played very well for us. He has come up with the big save whenever we made a mistake. Tonight, there were just too many mistakes. We can't expect him to be Superman."
The disturbing part for the Lightning, though, is that Khabibulin is a streaky goalie and has been Superman of late. Could the LeClair goal be a warning sign that he is beginning a plunge in the other direction? Is this the goal that Khabibulin's critics have been waiting for? The goal that will send him into a tailspin?
"Nik is strong enough mentally to handle something like that," Tortorella said. "He'll be fine."
Even Hitchcock said, "This is the playoffs. You learn to just drop it and move on."
Khabibulin didn't seem particularly bothered by his performance. Andreychuk said Khabibulin was no different on the bench or after the game than he is after a 40-save shutout.
"You lose, you lose, it's just one game," Khabibulin said. "It doesn't matter if you lose 1-0 or 10-0. We've just got to play better next game."
For the Lightning to have a chance in Game 3, and the series, it must hope Khabibulin's off game was a fluke and not the start of a trend.
"He's going to bounce back," Andreychuk said. "He has done that all year long for us ... We don't expect anything less."
