The room was brimming with the possibility of victory during the second interval as the Rangers played the Panthers on home ice for 40 minutes to earn a well-deserved draw.
It’s been a long time since this team was one win away from the Stanley Cup Final, since 2015 to be exact.
The score was tied 1-1, but the Garden crowd was going wild anyway.
After two games of defensive struggles, the Rangers have found something.
And the same thing we saw in the last two games happened in the final 20 minutes.
Whether it’s because Florida is wearing down the Rangers, the Panthers are pushing harder or some other reason, the Rangers have been brutally outplayed in the third period for three straight games since Thursday night’s Game 5 of the Eastern Conference finals, when Anton Randle scored the winning goal to give the Panthers a 3-2 victory.
To be fair, this third period wasn’t nearly as bad as the previous two, with the Panthers having an 8-2 high-danger chance differential at five-on-five, but the Rangers’ power play made the margin through the 20 total minutes a more acceptable 8-5.
But what’s the difference when you combine Games 3 through 5? Overall in the third period, the Panthers have been favored 23-5 in high-risk five-on-five chances and 24-8 at all strength, according to Natural Stat Trick.
Expanding that to scoring chances, the score is 43-12 when the game is tied and 51-19 overall.
“The third period, five or seven minutes in, they started to come at us and we had some chances,” Mika Zibandjied said. “We couldn’t get out of our own half. They played some fast hockey and got on the forecheck, but I think we had some chances to make it 2-1.”
The Panthers were mostly alive in the offensive zone until Kaapo Kakko ended the pressure on the power play with 6 minutes, 58 seconds left.
They had enough time and space to fire a shot between Igor Shesterkin’s legs at the goal not once but twice.
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And once the penalty expired, Florida was quickly back on the offensive, with Lundell scoring on a charge to take a 2-1 lead.
The Rangers managed to claw back after coming close to losing (and Florida not being as aggressive).
However, it is true that the Panthers appeared to have the momentum as the game entered the final 20 minutes.
And now it’s changing the series.
“I thought we had some good chances in the third quarter,” Jacob Trouba said. “I thought we had a lot of chances to rebound and we were pretty close to where we needed to be. Just a little mistake was the difference. They play well, too.”
