RALEIGH, N.C. — It ended in ridiculous fashion, but the Carolina Hurricanes sealed their own fate before that. Their last-gasp power play to keep their season alive came to nothing, and the puck came to Sam Bennett right out of the box with the home net empty.

Bennett ended their season with 54 seconds to go, with the easiest goal of the entire five-game series. The Florida Panthers will play for the Stanley Cup for the third straight year. The Hurricanes will spend another summer wondering what went wrong.

Bennett’s late goal came mere seconds after Andrei Svechnikov had a wide-open look in the slot on the power play and missed the net. These are the fine margins on which a playoff series is decided, that separate champions from would-be contenders.

For the third time in the past seven years, the Hurricanes made it to the conference finals but never pushed their opponent even to the edge of elimination. A 5-3 loss in Game 5 on Wednesday took care of that this time around, after the Hurricanes jumped out to an early two-goal lead and let it all slip away.

Just as Game 3 slipped away from them in a great big hurry — five Florida goals in eight minutes after the Hurricanes tied it 1-1 with every chance to get back in the series — so did the Hurricanes’ season. A listless power play followed by a bad Jesperi Kotkaniemi penalty followed by a power-play goal followed by another goal 30 seconds later followed by a third four minutes after that.

The Hurricanes played a near-perfect first period, had a 2-0 lead on a pair of Sebastian Aho goals, and still went into the third period down a goal after Anton Lundell beat Aho on a faceoff, then beat him to the net.

When Frederik Andersen made two huge saves on Brad Marchand and Carter Verhaeghe on a Florida power play early in the third to wake up a stunned building, the Hurricanes had some momentum and capitalized, with Seth Jarvis flipping the puck over Sergei Bobrovsky after Shayne Gostisbehere held in a Florida clearing attempt.

The good feelings lasted all of four minutes, before Aleksander Barkov found Verhaeghe alone at the post to put the Panthers back in the lead for good.

For all the talk about the Hurricanes’ physical toughness, or overall lack thereof, maybe the conversation should be about mental toughness. Championship teams don’t blink like that, let alone fall apart. The Panthers played about 10 good, dominant minutes Wednesday, even after Bobrovsky gave up two questionable goals to put them in a hole on the road, and won.

The Panthers converted on a key power play at a critical moment, and it springboarded them to the Stanley Cup Final. The Hurricanes went 0 for 6, including two chances in the second period after falling behind, and will watch on television.

“Near the end we got a little more urgent and starting putting more pucks to the net,” Jarvis said. “We maybe could have started doing that a little earlier. But you need to score in games like this. They did and we didn’t and that’s kind of the result of it.”

The real shame of it was that in the first two periods of Game 3, all of Game 4 and the first period of Game 5, the Hurricanes showed they had every capability to play the game that made such efficient and quick work of the New Jersey Devils and Washington Capitals in the first two rounds.

When they were on their toes like that — skating with, if not outskating, the Panthers; forcing turnovers instead of committing them; hitting as much as they’re hit — they proved themselves every bit the Panthers’ equal in this series, and maybe even dented Bobrovsky’s confidence a hair to boot.

Then they gave it all away as much as the Panthers took it.

They stopped hitting, stopped skating and let the momentum fizz away in a building ready to explode. Even their third, stirring goal was answered far too quickly. (As if feeling their pain, Mikko Rantanen hasn’t scored in two weeks, either.)

“It was them getting that momentum,” Hurricanes coach Rod Brind’Amour said. “It was a backbreaker I think, then they get another one and got another one, and you could just feel us kind of ... it was natural. The building, everyone. It just sucked a little life out of us.”

All that said, the damage was really done when the Hurricanes failed to win either, if not both, of the first two games on home ice. They have been digging out of that hole ever since.

“You can’t start a series like that and expect a better outcome,” Hurricanes captain Jordan Staal said. “You’re hoping, obviously, for it as you move forward. But the first two games we were a little hesitant and kind of off a little bit. The group, as a whole, held on and the last three games played some good hockey.”

Was it as simple as this: The Hurricanes, not pushed anywhere near their capabilities by the Devils or the Capitals, didn’t really catch up to the pace of this series until Game 3, before their backs were even truly against the wall? Their third-period implosion in that game camouflaged how well they had played to that point, and they brought that game to Game 4 and back home for Game 5, to start at least.

But the Panthers are as clinical as the Hurricanes are too often wasteful, and whether they were embarrassing the Hurricanes over the first three games or outdueling them in Game 5, they needed only the slightest opening to rip a game wide open. The Hurricanes grind teams down until they break. The Panthers assassinate them.

That was the difference in a series that the Hurricanes finally found their way into, a hair too late. And it’s all too late now. Another season with dreams of at least playing for the Stanley Cup over too soon. Another 82 endless games of waiting for these moments, down the drain. The last days of Brent Burns and Dmitry Orlov in Carolina jerseys, surely Kotkaniemi, and maybe even, at 36, Staal?

“I’ve got nothing but pride with this group,” Brind’Amour said. “I didn’t love how it went this series, but that’s the standard right there. You’re not giving Florida enough credit.”

Hurricanes fans should know better than anyone that merely making the playoffs is nothing to be taken for granted, that winning a series let alone two is hard, grueling work, just to get to this point — especially after navigating the massive turnover in the offseason and the ill-fated Rantanen deal, then throwing rookies Alexander Nikishin and Scott Morrow into the maw of this series.

This may be the worst hurdle to trip over; at least the team that loses in the finals can say they had a chance. The Hurricanes, seven years into this run, still haven’t had that opportunity.

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