Dave Hyde: Outworked, outplayed, outscored – the Panthers record-setting team is exposed by Tampa Bay

One goal. That’s it. That’s all the Florida Panthers scored again. Just one. There’s no need to belabor the point by now, especially since it’s just one lonely point.

The record-setting Panthers scored one goal in only three of 82 regular-season games.

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They’ve now scored one in all three losses to Tampa Bay this playoff series after Sunday’s 5-1 loss in Game 3.

Frustrated? Sure, that was evident by their play, as well as their words afterward. But maybe they’re exposed, too, as a pretty team that lacks enough blue-collar grit in the playoffs.

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“They have more will and more desire than we do,’’ Panthers coach Andrew Brunette said after the loss. “It shows if you watch the game, shift after shift right now. We need to dial it in deeper and harder and want it more.”

That’s the kind of thing you don’t expect to hear from the team that had just lost the opening two games of this series at home. You expected frenzied desperation, unbridled passion. But there

But there was Brunette saying they were outworked again this series – and really, for more than that if you look back at the Washington series.

“When there’s a loose puck, they’re battling,’’ Brunette said. “They want it a little more. There’s small margins, but margins. Over the course of a 60-minute game, they matter. We have to find a a way to be above the margins, not below them.”

Outworked. Out-hustled. Out-and-outplayed. You’d have thought Tampa Bay was the unproven and uncertain playoff team rather than the one chasing a third Stanley Cup.

Instead, there were the Tampa Bay stars like Steven Stamkos and Victor Hedman blocking shots — 27 of them in all by the Lightning in Game 3 — so they didn’t even reach goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy.

Not that Vasilevskiy needs much help. But in the second period that swung the game, when Tampa Bay broke a 1-1 tie with two unanswered goals, Tampa Bay blocked 12 shots to the Panthers’ two.

Sunday’s tale was told through two, second period plays. Jonathan Huberdeau had an open net after a cross-ice pass on an aggressive Panthers’ power play and his shot went off stuck-out Lightning stick over the net.

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“That was an empty net and hit his stick,’’ Huberdeau said.

Play went the other way, and Stamkos had a similarly open net. His one-time shot made it, 3-1.

“They’re a good team,’’ Huberdeau said. “They’re waiting for us to make a mistake and take advantage of it.”

They had no puck luck. That was true, as far as it goes. Barkov hit the post once. They aforementioned power play had five Grad-A scoring chances. Even in the final minutes, Mamin pushed a shot through a pile of players that swept by Vasilevskiy toward the goal line, only to be swiped clear by a Tampa defenseman.

The good news: The Panthers scored a power-play goal. So DiMaggio’s streak is safe. Reinhart scored on the first power play Sunday ending their 0-for-26 streak covering nine games. That’s third longest in NHL playoff history – by the team that averaged 4.11 goals this year.

It’s one thing to lose to a championship-tested team like Tampa Bay. The Panthers did so last year in the playoffs. But that was a tough series.

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This? It’s a disappointment. A flame-out. Tampa Bay came off a tough, seven-game series in Toronto and is without its top playmaker in Brayden Point.

It was set up for the Panthers to take their next step toward greatness — at least, if they have it in them. Now they’re one mis-step Monday from season’s end.

“We get another chance,’’ Brunette said. “What an opportunity. And then we can bring it home (for Game 5). That’s got to be our focus. … hopefully, we can find some energy and passion and joy. There’s more frustration than joy now.”

“It’s 3-0, who cares,’’ Huberdeau said. “We can come back. We just need to get one win.”

Then, to underscore the problem, he added, “And we need to score more than one goal.”