The Rangers and Panthers battled it out within the 2024 Jap Convention Remaining for the suitable to compete for the Stanley Cup.
Lower than two years later, the 2 groups squared off in a meaningless sport in March that resulted in a 3-1 Rangers win Sunday afternoon at Madison Sq. Backyard. Ranked on the very backside of the convention, the Rangers and Panthers are each in a lot totally different locations than they had been slightly below 22 months in the past.
The distinction? Florida truly has one thing to point out for it: two Stanley Cup rings.
On this Sunday matinee, nevertheless, the Rangers acquired stellar goaltending from Igor Shesterkin (27 saves) and broke via on one other encouraging play from a rookie.
They took benefit of a hampered Florida crew that’s projected to overlook the playoffs for the primary time since 2018-19.
Adam Sykora scored his second objective in as many video games, finessing an ideal tip on Adam Fox’s shot simply over 5 minutes into the third interval to open the scoring.
The Rangers then doubled their lead on Conor Sheary’s fifth objective of the season earlier than Adam Fox potted an empty-net objective to seal the victory.
Since that convention closing assembly, the Rangers have gone 3-2-0 towards the Panthers within the common season, together with a dominant 5-1 win within the Winter Traditional in Miami earlier this season.
They’ve one sport remaining towards them this season in Dawn on April 13, which is the second-to-last sport of the 2025-26 marketing campaign.
Of the 20 Rangers who dressed for Sport 6 of the ECF on June 1, 2024, solely eight dressed on Sunday.
Igor Shesterkin, Mika Zibanejad, Vincent Trocheck, Adam Fox, Alexis Lafreniere, Braden Schneider, Jonny Brodzinski and Will Cuylle are the one ones who performed in that collection and suited up for this sport.
Backup goalie Jonathan Fast was additionally on the bench for Sport 6, however he has been sidelined with an upper-body harm the final six contests.
Whereas the Panthers had seven gamers — Andrei Vasilevskiy, Aaron Ekblad, Matthew Tkachuk, Carter Verhaeghe, Dmitry Kulikov, Eetu Luostarinen and Gustav Forsling — in Sunday’s sport from the lineup that ended the Rangers’ season in 2024, the guests had six others not taking part in on account of harm.
That included Sam Bennett, Aleksander Barkov, Sam Reinhart, Anton Lundell, Evan Rodrigues and one-time Ranger Niko Mikkola.
