featured-image

The Rangers were better, but they were not good enough. Now their season is on the brink, requiring two consecutive victories over the Panthers to stay alive. Impossible? Of course not.

Improbable? It sure looks that way. As they have in most of the Eastern Conference final, the Panthers looked like the better team on Thursday night in winning, 3-2, in Game 5 at Madison Square Garden. The fact that this time the Rangers looked sharper than they had in splitting two games in Florida was small consolation, though.



For a key stretch early in the third period, the Panthers took over the game the way they had for stretches earlier in the series, and it paid off. They broke a 1-1 tie at 10:22 when Anton Lundell scored off a three-on-two rush, firing from the left circle past the Rangers’ Braden Schneider and a screen by his teammate, Vladimir Tarasenko, and squeezed the puck past Igor Shesterkin. It was an appropriate exclamation point to what had gone on to that point in the final period.

“Our game got simpler in the third period, and that was the key to it,” Panthers coach Paul Maurice said. Said the Rangers’ Adam Fox, “It’s not the way you want to come out for the third period, 1-1 at home.” No, it was not.

But again, the Rangers had been pretty good to that point, particularly in the first period, when they looked like the team that won the Presidents’ Trophy. If this were earlier in the playoffs or earlier in this series, that would be a good thing. The problem.

Back to Fashion Page