The New York Rangers displayed a lackluster offense in their 3-0 home loss to the Florida Panthers on Wednesday, marking the start of their Eastern Conference Finals series.
Before this game, the Rangers had been shut out only once in 92 games (including regular season and playoffs), which occurred on December 9 in a 4-0 loss to the Washington Capitals.
Wednesday’s performance was particularly poor, with the Rangers managing just 12 shots on goal through the first two periods, including a stretch where they had only one shot over 16 minutes.
Despite some opportunities, including breakaways by Braden Schneider and Will Cuylle, a missed one-timer by Mika Zibanejad, a brief four-shot surge in the third period, and a late power play, the Rangers failed to score.
Credit goes to Panthers goalie Sergei Bobrovsky, who recorded a 23-save shutout with several key stops.
The Panthers scored late in the first period with a goal from Matthew Tkachuk. The score remained 1-0 until Alexis Lafrenière inadvertently deflected a puck into his own net with 3:48 left, giving Carter Verhaeghe credit for the goal. Sean Bennett added an empty-netter to finalize the score.
While this is just the first game of a best-of-seven series, the Rangers’ flat performance left fans concerned. However, there is still time for New York to recover and turn the series around.
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