The first game of the Eastern Conference finals was difficult for the guards.
The Florida Panthers, who were in the Stanley Cup Finals a season ago, arrived at Madison Square Garden and defeated the Rangers to take a 1-0 series lead.
Although the punctuation says the Panthers won 3-0, the game was much closer than that. Florida scored a first period goal in a Matthew Tkachuk shot, but the score remained that way until the third period.
A disallowed goal changed Rangers’ momentum and it looked like they were finally getting scoring chances, waking up a dead MSG crowd. But then, Carter Verhaeghe picked up the puck in the corner of the Rangers zone and centered it toward the net where Alexis Lafrenière I was skating.
The puck hit Lafreniere’s stick and the 22-year-old accidentally hit it Igor Shesterkin for an own goal, which immediately took the air out of the arena.
Although the Panthers scored an empty net late in the period, it was the own goal with less than four minutes remaining that put the game out of reach.
“I don’t know if it was due to pressure. It was a 1-0 game all the way and then we had the lucky goal to make it 2-0,” said the Rangers manager. Pedro Lavioleta said after the game. “I don’t think we gave up too much because we were pressing, I just think we slowly got better as the game went on, but I still think there’s still a march to go.”
“I tried to take the puck away and I saw the goalie come out and he shot it into the boards. I just got the puck and tried to make a play for the net,” Verhaeghe said of the own goal. “I think [Tkachuk] was going through the back door. I tried to put it on his tape, but I put it on someone else’s tape. And it went in, fortunately.”
“It’s a tough jump,” Laviolette said of the own goal and Lafreniere. “He was trying to do the right thing. It was a difficult recovery.”
Wednesday’s loss leaves the Rangers behind in the series, 0-1, for the first time this postseason.
“I think we can play better. I don’t think this was the best version of ourselves,” Laviolette said. “Let’s see what they did, see what we can do better in all phases of the game. There is more to give and more to do out there.
“Game 1 didn’t go the way we wanted and now we have to focus on Game 2 and make that the priority.”
The Rangers were shut out for the first time since December 9th and the Blueshirts didn’t win the President’s Trophy because they were outplayed and made mistakes too often, so if New York wants to come back in this series, they’ll have to pull away in Game 1.
Luckily for the Rangers, they can get back on the ice quickly to show who they really are when Game 2 takes place on Friday at MSG.
