The Blueshirts battled here while facing extinction for the first time in Game 6. There was no quit in New York. But the Panthers were too tough.
It’s 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.
The Blueshirts battled here while facing extinction for the first time in Saturday’s Game 6. There was no quit in New York. But the Panthers were too tough. They never took their eyes off the prize. They are the first losing Cup finalist to return to the scene of the crime since the 2009 Penguins were able to reverse their fortune against Detroit.
There will be no next series for head coach Peter Laviolette, his staff, and the athletes for which to prepare. There may be another communal hug or two along the way, but there are no more practices and no more games. This is going to hurt and it is going to linger.
For while the Blueshirts took great strides this season in moving from a first-round exit to the NHL’s final four after setting franchise records for wins and points in a season, they were unable to take the final step. Their best was not good enough.
The core featuring Chris Kreider, Igor Shesterkin, Mika Zibanejad, Jacob Trouba, Adam Fox, Ryan Lindgren, K’Andre Miller, Ryan Lindgren, Filip Chytil, Alexis Lafreniere and Kaapo Kakko has been in place since 2020-21. Vincent Trocheck joined last year.
The 2022 team got 10 playoff wins and hit the wall. This team got 10 playoff wins and hit the wall. That equates to six too few both times. The club’s window of contention has not closed, but there will be changes, possibly a substantial one or two as GM Chris Drury attacks the offseason and attempts to complete a puzzle that is still missing some pieces — bigger and jagged-edge ones, at that.
