New York Rangers vs. Florida Panthers: 2024 Stanley Cup playoff series preview and pick

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Credit: Dec 29, 2023; Sunrise, Florida, USA; Florida Panthers defenseman Gustav Forsling (42) battles New York Rangers left wing Artemi Panarin (10) for the puck during the first period at Amerant Bank Arena. Mandatory Credit: Jasen Vinlove-USA TODAY Sports

New York Rangers: 114 points, 1^st in Metropolitan, def. CAR in Round 2 (4-2)

Florida Panthers: 110 points, 1^st in Atlantic, def. BOS in Round 2 (4-2)

Schedule (ET)

Date	Game	Time
Wednesday, May 22	1. Florida at New York	8 p.m. ET
Friday, May 24	2. Florida at New York	8 p.m. ET
Sunday, May 26	3. New York at Florida	3 p.m. ET
Tuesday, May 28	4. New York at Florida	8 p.m. ET
*Thursday, May 30	5. Florida at New York	8 p.m. ET
*Saturday, June 1	6. New York at Florida	8 p.m. ET
*Monday, June 3	7. Florida at New York	8 p.m. ET

TV: ESPN, ESPN2, Sportsnet, CBC, ABC, TVA Sports. * if necessary

The Skinny

Can you say team of destiny? The parallels between these New York Rangers and the 1994 Rangers, who won the franchise’s last Stanley Cup, are getting eerie at this point. Both teams won the Presidents’ Trophy. Both teams opened the playoffs going 7-0. Both teams were spurred by a natural hat trick in the third period of a Game 6 – Mark Messier doing it in against the New jersey Devils in the Guarantee Game 30 years ago, and Chris Kreider doing it against the Carolina Hurricanes to help the Rangers rally from a 3-1 deficit and win the series earlier this week.

The Rangers don’t play perfect hockey. They’ve only outchanced their opponent at 5-on-5 twice in 10 games so far this postseason. But with their special teams exceling and goaltender Igor Shesterkin outdueling his counterparts, does it matter? The Rangers have some kinda juju going right now.

Meanwhile, the Florida Panthers have looked the part of a team hellbent on resolving unfinished business after falling short in the Stanley Cup Final a year ago. In the NHL’s most rugged and physical division, they have emerged as the bully of the bullies, going 8-3 against the Tampa Bay Lightning and Boston Bruins. The Panthers have tilted the play, averaging almost nine more shots per game than their opponents so far this postseason. Elite two-way center Aleksander Barkov is playing perhaps the best hockey of his life. Sam Bennett managed to get under the skin of even super-pest Brad Marchand. Can the Rangers stop this Florida freight train?

Head to Head

NY Rangers: 1-2-0
Florida: 2-0-1

The Panthers won the season series decisively, but every game was competitive. The Panthers edged the Rangers 4-3 in their first meeting. The second meeting ended 4-2 but with an empty-netter. And the Rangers took the third in a shootout. Sam Reinhart had the Blueshirts’ number, burying four goals in the first two victories. But make no mistake: these were back-and-forth contests. It’s about what you’d expect from two teams separated by four points in the year-end standings.

Top Five Scorers

NY Rangers

Vincent Trocheck, 14 points
Mika Zibanejad, 14 points
Artemi Panarin, 11 points
Chris Kreider, 10 points
Alexis Lafreniere, 10 points

Florida

Matthew Tkachuk, 14 points
Aleksander Barkov, 13 points
Carter Verhaeghe, 11 points
Sam Reinhart, 9 points
Anton Lundell, 9 points

X-Factor

The Rangers toppled two of their primary divisional rivals in the Washington Capitals and Carolina Hurricanes so far this postseason, but the series weren’t bloodbaths. The Rangers are averaging the 13^th-most hits per 60 in the 16-team field. The Hurricanes were dead last. The Rangers have not labored through particularly physical series so far. All that changes for the Eastern Conference Final. The Panthers are the most violent team in the NHL, full stop. They led the league in hits and penalty minutes in the regular season. The dynamic of this series will thus feel very different. Will the Rangers be ready for a shift toward nastiness?

Don’t bet against it. Coach Peter Laviolette can let 6-foot-7 maniac Matt Rempe off the leash if necessary – he’s dressed for seven of the Rangers’ 10 games so far in the playoffs – and New York doesn’t lack for punishing intimidators on defense between Jacob Trouba and K’Andre Miller, who will be tasked with containing Matthew Tkachuk and Sam Bennett. Whereas the Panthers had to battle through two physical opponents to get here, the Blueshirts are likely less black and blue. They aren’t as rugged as the Panthers but aren’t an all-finesse team, either. They also could be entering this bare-knuckle brawl a bit fresher.

Offense

The Rangers’ playoff identity has been fairly consistent with their regular-season one. Fueled by their significant star power, they do their most damage on the power play, and they get by at 5-on-5. They iced the NHL’s No. 3 power play during the regular season at 26.4 percent and have been even deadlier in the postseason at 31.4 percent. Through two rounds, they sit near the bottom of the playoff field in generating scoring chances and expected goals at 5-on-5. But only one team has buried more power-play goals. The Rangers can make an undisciplined team pay, and that’s an extremely relevant stat coming into a series against the least-disciplined team in the NHL. It might be the most important edge New York has this series.

The Rangers have also gotten timely scoring from their big-name forwards in key spurts. Mika Zibanejad popped off for seven points in the four-game sweep of Washington, while Vincent Trocheck had eight points in the Carolina series, and Kreider was obviously the biggest factor in the deciding game. The Rangers aren’t seeing peak dominance from Artemi Panarin, who had 120 points in the regular season but who continues his career trend of scoring less in the playoffs than in the regular season. Theoretically, there will be even less time and space for him to work with in this series. But he did get going with eight points in Round 2 against a stingy Carolina team.

The Panthers’ good-but-not-elite power play doesn’t quite measure up to New York’s, but the Panthers were a much better 5-on-5 team than the Blueshirts in the regular season and can match their star-power up front. The Carter Verhaeghe/Matthew Tkachuk duo was particularly dominant in Round 1, and the line of Vladimir Tarasenko, Barkov and Sam Reinhart was Florida’s engine in Round 2. With Barkov on the ice at 5-on-5 vs. the Bruins, the Panthers held a whopping 50-25 edge in scoring chances. And while the Rangers move the puck well from their D-corps, the Panthers have gotten superior scoring help from theirs, including seven goals, none bigger than Gustav Forsling’s series winner against Boston late in Game 6. The Rangers have two goals from their defense this postseason.

Defense

The Blueshirts have been at odds with the analytics community more often than not in recent seasons due to their defensive tendency of “lay and pray,” a.k.a. rely on Shesterkin to bail them out of trouble. Is that characterization fair or a bit too sweeping?

Well, only two (long eliminated) teams in the 16-team playoff field average more shots allowed per 60 at 5-on-5 in the postseason. The Rangers were outshot in all six games and outchanced in all but one game against Carolina in Round 2. This is definitely more of a bend-but-don’t break defensive group than a lockdown one despite the presence of all-world blueliner Adam Fox. He and partner Ryan Lindgren have handled the Rangers’ toughest defensive assignments and haven’t exactly broken even, allowing a 72-53 shot margin, yet the Rangers are up 4-3 with them on the ice at 5-on-5. That’s what a great goalie can do for you.

The Rangers lead the playoffs with an 89.5 percent efficiency on the penalty kill, and in that scenario, it’s not about relying on Shesterkin. They’ve actually graded out extremely well in limiting scoring chances and shot quality.

Overall, the defensive side of the puck is Florida’s clearest advantage in this matchup. They allowed the fewest goals in the league during the regular season and, led by Barkov, have maintained their identity this postseason. They allow a piddly 24.1 shots on goal per game and hold a 55.18 percent edge in 5-on-5 scoring chances over their opponents. They’ve also, crucially, done a great job bailing out their outlaw ways with a penalty kill trading at 86.1 percent.

Goaltending

We’re kidding ourselves if we don’t say the Rangers go as Shesterkin goes. The world’s quickest, most athletic goaltender has as strong a claim to the Conn Smythe Trophy as anyone so far in this postseason. Look at the point-blank save he made on Andrei Svechnikov on the dying minutes of Game 6 against Carolina; Freddie Andersen at the other end simply doesn’t make that stop. Shesterkin has a .923 save percentage and has saved 6.7 goals above average so far this postseason. In six of the Rangers’ eight wins, he has posted a .917 SV% or higher. It may seem like stating the obvious to claim “they win when their goalie plays well,” but the point here is that they have rarely bailed out a bad Shesterkin performance. More frequently, he has elevated his team, and their two defeats this postseason have come in games where he fell below a .900.

At the other end: Sergei Bobrovsky is capable of matching Shesterkin on any given night but probably not every night. He was the story for Florida last postseason, but this time around, he’s been mostly good, rarely great. He carries a .902 SV% and has been held below a .900 mark six times in 11 games. But it’s extremely telling that the Panthers are 4-2 in those contests. They’re a balanced enough team that they don’t need him to be perfect. He just can’t lose games for them. He’s come up with plenty of clutch saves in pivotal moments.

Injuries

Echoing the earlier point about non-physical series: the Rangers are pretty much unscathed entering the Eastern Conference Final. Their only current listed injury is that of Blake Wheeler, who hasn’t played since February following an ugly lower-body injury. But even he was recently removed from LTIR and is skating with the team. The greybeard right winger, 37, shed his non-contact jersey earlier this week and has been practising in full.

The Panthers got Bennett back in time for him to wreak havoc during the Bruins series and they enter the Eastern Conference Final with no officially listed injuries, believe it or not.

Intangibles

The Panthers are probably the better hockey team on paper – they’re the most balanced team in the Eastern Conference. But the Hurricanes were better than the Blueshirts on paper too, and it didn’t matter. The Rangers have a special chemistry brewing this year. They felt mostly invincible in winning their first seven games of the postseason. They fell behind 3-1 on the road in the third period of Game 6 against Carolina and didn’t blink.

The reigning Presidents’ Trophy winners have home ice advantage for the playoffs, and with all due respect to Amerant Bank Arena, Madison Square Garden provides the Rangers will a big home ice advantage in up to four games in this series. Including the regular season, the Rangers are 34-12 in the world’s most storied arena in 2023-24. The home crowd is feeling those 1994 parallels, and it feels like the Rangers have an emotional edge over almost anyone.

Series Prediction

This series should be an absolute doozy. It has every ingredient you want: marquee stars on both sides, some big, physical players who should up the bad blood in a hurry, blustery head coaches in Laviolette and Paul Maurice and goalies who can steal games in Shesterkin and Bobrovsky.

The Rangers really do have a team of destiny feel to them, as well as urgency to go all the way with several of their core stars on the wrong side of 30. But the Panthers also feel very much in their win-now window. They seemingly have no glaring weakness in any category. While the Rangers’ “our year” vibes should make this a back-and-forth battle, I lean ever so slightly toward the Panthers. They can match the Rangers’ scoring, they’re better defensively, they’re more physical and they only need their goaltender to be decent. Whatever happens, this series has the makings of a classic.

Panthers in seven games.

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