Although they finished the season a perfect 11 wins, the Cobras couldn't match the pressure of Gatsby's Panthers, who shocked them with their first loss, at a time when the Cobras thought they were invincible.

"The last two games of the season were far from our best games, and that cost us going into the playoffs. We didn't have the playoff mentality." said D Yves Maynard. LW Anders Visconti added, "Hey, you can't win them all. It's sad that we had to lose now, but its over, so now we need to concentrate on next season. Going 11-1 in our first season is a great accomplishment. We have to build on that and remember that we're still a winning team."

The Cobras appeared to tie up the game when wingers Jim Mucciaccio and Jim Torchia broke into the Panthers' zone on a 2-on-1 with under two minutes left. The Cobras bench exploded as Jim T netted a feed through the goal crease from Jim M, but after a few minutes of debate with the linesman, the referee decided the play was offsides and the goal was waved off. The Cobras pulled their goaltender for the remaining time, but allowed an empty net goal in the dying seconds.

On the controversial call, center John Loburak said "It really doesn't make sense that they would allow the play to continue, then later talk for 3-4 minutes to decide the guys were offsides. I mean, they don't have video review like the NHL, so what could they have discussed to come up with that conclusion? I think that was the wrong call to make, but we shouldn't have to depend on last minute heroics to win this game. We should have played better for the first 43 minutes."

Jim Torchia calmly added "Well, what can you do? You can't fight the refs. All you can do is hope that one day one of those F@#$ING @#%! ASS@#! MOTHERF@#%! @%#! !$!@$#% !@#$! %!# %!@$##! !%%!#$ #%!$!@# STUPID !@%%* &!#$* will learn to !@^!&# call the game!!"