“I Owe the Boys”

LOS ANGELES – No one ever said it was his fault.

If anything, it was completely unfair.

However, Kevin Rooney is determined to make things right.

“I felt like I owed it to the boys,” Rooney said of his heroic strike in the final stages of regulation in San Jose on Tuesday. “Obviously, things didn't go right in the Edmonton game.”

Maybe so.

But it wasn't for lack of action.

It takes guts to reach that level – and not from the stick of young Evan Bouchard, who routinely pushes bombs to 90, 95 and even 100 miles per hour. But Rooney, of course, did it anyway, sacrificing the body to the rising blast, which left him little time to react.

You can replay that moment a million times, and you'll never see the puck take the same route as Jacob Markstrom deflected it from 20 feet and beat it on the glove side for the game-winning shot.

So when Fabian Zetterlund got a great look with seconds to spare on Tuesday with a sharp shot, Rooney returned to action and hurt the inside of his left knee.

Like someone did.

For boys.

“It was good to get one in the next game, so my teammates saw that I paid for them every night,” Rooney said. “Sometimes you get them, sometimes you don't. But it was a really fun moment — seeing all those guys give me the stick and Husk (later in the locker room) giving me the stick meant a lot.”