Rangers couldn’t match Panthers’ toughness as Stanley Cup drought continues

NHL

By Larry Brooks

SUNRISE, Fla. — It has become an annual rite of passage, sort of like Daylight Savings Time. But instead of moving the clock ahead by an hour every spring, the Rangers add another year to their Stanley Cup drought.

It will be 31 years since the last ride up the Canyon of Heroes for the Rangers, who were a very good team this year and a very good team through the first two rounds of the playoffs but could not quite sustain it against a bigger, stronger, more physical team in the conference final.

There’s no shame to it. This wasn’t last year’s no-show defeat to the Devils. The Rangers left everything they had on the ice in this six-game series in which they were brutalized, pounded and softened up through the opening three contests by a Panthers team that fattened up by winning the final three games of this conference final.

Indeed, the Rangers left everything they had on the ice for the duration of the season in which they finished with the best record in the league and advanced to the conference final for the second time in three years.

They just weren’t quite good enough, kind of the same way they were not good enough in their six-game ouster by Tampa Bay two years ago, even if that unexpected run had a different feel to it.

It was 2-1 for the Panthers in Saturday’s Game 6 to send Florida to the Cup final for the second consecutive year following their five-game defeat to Vegas last June. The Rangers were not forced to spend as much time in their zone as they had the previous three contests — the ice began to tilt dramatically in the Blueshirts’ Game 3 overtime victory — but they could not generate meaningful scoring chances against Sergei Bobrovsky.

Indeed, the Blueshirts scored five goals over the final three games — one on the power play, one shorthanded, one five-on-five, and two at six-on-five with the extra attacker that included Artemi Panarin’s last-gasp goal at 18:20 of the third period to bring his team within one.

“I would say that we’re a good team that gave everything,” said Panarin, who ripped one over Bobrovsky’s shoulder late for his first goal of the series and fifth of the tournament. “These games were so tight.”

Panarin made reference to the fact that maybe the Rangers should have played like they did in the final five minutes when they attempted to swarm the zone. But Florida broke up play after play through the neutral zone on those rare occasions the Rangers were able to break out of their own end with coherence.

The Rangers bought in all year. They were the best-coached team on Broadway in decades. They asked to be coached after last spring’s debacle and they responded to incoming head coach Peter Laviolette and his staff from beginning to end. They were one of the four best teams in the NHL in a 32-team league.

It’s not everything but it’s not nothing, either.

“Our guys fought this year, they bought in right from the start,” Laviolette said. “They fought, we make it to this point and it’s disappointing when you start something like this, you don’t do it to get three wins in the playoffs or five wins in the playoffs, you do it to go the whole way so there’s disappointment that sets in, for sure.

“With regard to our intentions we had throughout the course of the year, the whole thing was to avoid what we’re feeling right now. No one expected to be on this end of it.”

The Rangers are built to certain specifications. The Rangers are built on their power play. The Panthers put it on a spike, killing 14 of 15 New York advantages. The inviolate first unit was overwhelmed most of the time. It wasn’t only this series, too, the Blueshirts going 2-for-25 over the final 10 games of the tournament. Laviolette wouldn’t mix up the personnel.

Chris Kreider had difficulty forming words after his elimination-game record dropped to a career 20-10. The “10” represents the 10 playoff seasons for which No. 20 has been a Ranger. He recovered to give an analysis of the series, but there is 2012 disappointment as a 21-year-old, there is 2017 disappointment as a 26-year-old, and there is now disappointment as a 33-year-old.

Kreider had little impact on the series, getting only that shorthanded goal in Game 5. Mika Zibanejad had little impact on the series, failing to record a goal. Panarin got the one goal. Adam Fox did not score in the playoffs. K’Andre Miller had a difficult series. So did Jacob Trouba.

Miller and Trouba, by the way, were the only Rangers defensemen to score a goal in the postseason and both were shorthanded. That is hard to believe.

The Rangers could not get to the inside just like the Rangers could not get to the inside against the Lightning in 2022. Maybe someone can sense a pattern. Maybe someone will acknowledge that size still matters as much as it ever did when it comes to the playoffs.

When push came to shove, the Rangers were shoved out of the playoffs and that should never be allowed to happen again.

Guys fell short. The team fell short. The wait becomes 31 years. The weight becomes 31 years, as well.

The Rangers did themselves, their fans and the city proud this season. They left it all on the ice. They just weren’t quite good enough, just weren’t big enough.

Wait ’til … some year.