NEW YORK — After nearly a full game of trying to break through the Florida Panthers’ relentless defense, the New York Rangers finally found a way to get a shot past the goalie and into the net.
Unfortunately for the Rangers, the puck went past their own goalie and into their net: A cruel twist in a trying Game 1 on Wednesday night.
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“I don’t think that was the best version of ourselves,” Rangers coach Peter Laviolette said of his team’s 3-0 loss. “There’s more for us to give and more for us to do out there.”
With his team trailing 1-0 late in the third period, Rangers goalie Igor Shesterkin tried to clear a puck off the sideboards. It landed right at the feet of Florida’s Carter Verhaeghe, and the winger looked to find Matthew Tkachuk with a centering pass. Rangers forward Alexis Lafrenière attempted to break up the play, but in the process, he knocked the puck through Shesterkin’s legs.
“Tried to put it on his tape, but put it on someone else’s tape and it went in,” Verhaege said.
Yes, the goal was flukey — “Just one of those unfortunate breaks,” captain Jacob Trouba said — but the Rangers weren’t in control of play at that moment, and that was a theme of the night. They finished the game with 23 shots on goal, just below their playoff average, but they had only 12 through the first two periods, and at one point they went more than 14 minutes without a shot. For a good chunk of the game, the Panthers stifled the Presidents’ Trophy winners.
The Rangers have managed to push and create clutch goals throughout this playoff run, but Florida has, too. The Panthers are a much better team than the Washington Capitals and one that, for whatever reason, thrives this time of year in a way that the Carolina Hurricanes don’t. New York can’t simply play as well as it did the first two rounds. It likely needs to be better.
“Probably gotta play a little faster, a little crisper coming out of our zone,” Jimmy Vesey said. “That will lead to more zone entries, possession, things like that. We’ve got to turn up the speed a little bit.”
That’s hard to do against Florida. During their six-game second-round series against the Boston Bruins, the Panthers allowed an average of only 21.66 shots per game. The Bruins never had more than 29 shots in a game. Florida kept them under 20 shots three times. The Panthers, who relied heavily on goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky to reach the Stanley Cup Final in 2023, now are playing like a formidable defensive team, one that will test the Rangers in new ways.
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New York struggled to get through the neutral zone throughout Game 1, with Florida breaking up passes and forcing turnovers. That’s an area in which Laviolette wants to see better execution from his players.
“Some of that I’ve got to give to (the Panthers). Some of it, we’ve got to take responsibility,” the coach said.
“Feeding their transition through turnovers kind of comes back to get us at times,” Trouba added. “Just advancing the puck in and getting on the forecheck and creating something in the O-zone is where we’re going to generate some offense.”
Laviolette tried mixing up his lines with the team struggling to generate offense in the second period. He shifted Filip Chytil to the top line with center Mika Zibanejad and left wing Chris Kreider. That moved Jack Roslovic to the third line, where he was joined by Will Cuylle, who got a bump up from the fourth line. Kaapo Kakko moved down from the third to fourth. The second line of Artemi Panarin, Vincent Trocheck and Lafrenière, to which the Rangers frequently turn for offense, remained the same.
Laviolette mostly went back to his original lines in the third period, though he double-shifted top playmakers such as Panarin. Only one Rangers line — Panarin, Trocheck and Lafrenière — was on the ice for more five-on-five shots than shots against, according to Natural Stat Trick.
That’s not to say the Rangers generated nothing. Braden Schneider hit the post on a breakaway, and Roslovic sprung Cuylle on a second-period breakaway that Bobrovsky saved. Alex Wennberg nearly scored during a third-period flurry around the net. Lafrenière followed that up by striking iron with a shot. In total, Florida had 52.84 of the five-on-five expected goals, per Natural Stat Trick — a slight edge over the Rangers (47.16 percent), but not a huge one.
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“All of these games are so close,” Panthers coach Paul Maurice said. “The score almost doesn’t tell you anything. It’s the turn of a puck. It’s a puck that we blocked that they didn’t or a pass that we made. It’s two or three, and that’s the difference.”
The Panthers made those plays, though, and the Rangers couldn’t. The Madison Square Garden crowd deadened during New York’s offensive lulls, which Laviolette noticed. His team needs to give fans more reason to cheer, he said.
The building gained some energy when the coach successfully won a goaltender interference challenge that erased an Oliver Ekman-Larsson goal. Trouba added to the buzz by laying a big hit, and the near-goals from Wennberg and Lafrenière came shortly after. Adam Fox nearly scored on a power play, but Bobrovsky made a pad save to keep the Panthers ahead.
In total, the Rangers had 11 shots in the final period, nearly half of their total for the night. The team’s potent offense finally seemed to be generating, but the stretch of strong play came too late for the Rangers to break through.
“The third, I thought we pushed it a little bit,” Laviolette said. “We need more of that.”
(Photo of Alexis Lafrenière and Ryan Lindgren: Bruce Bennett / Getty Images)
