In a New York Rangers championship anniversary season notable for uncanny parallels that continually popped up, the final one occurred in the Eastern Conference Final. Thirty years after winning their last title, the Blueshirts’ task was to once more overcome a deep, formidable, smothering team with a chance to earn the opportunity to play for the Stanley Cup – their opponent again wearing a red, white and black color scheme, no less.
With their backs against the wall in a Game 6 – just as was the case then – the similarities between that Rangers team and this one came to a jarring end.
The desperate moments of three decades ago that produced the franchise’s high point couldn’t be duplicated in this East Final, in which these Rangers weren’t nearly the equal of the Florida Panthers. It was wholly unlike the Rangers of 1994, whose pushback against the New Jersey Devils pushed their cross-Hudson River rivals out of the way and opened the path to the club’s first title in 54 years.
No, the Rangers of Artemi Panarin, Mika Zibanejad, Chris Kreider and Adam Fox aren’t the Rangers of Mark Messier, Adam Graves, Alexei Kovalev and Brian Leetch. It turns out that the latter group was made of different stuff than the current bunch, one that possessed belief in themselves through a 55-win, 114-point season, but didn’t have what their predecessors could call upon in their darkest hour.
Rangers of 2024 Lacked Championship Pedigree of 1994 Champs
These Rangers, who registered 34 comeback wins through the regular season and playoffs, failed to exhibit championship mettle when it was required. Unlike their 1994 brethren, the current crop of stars couldn’t author a decisive final 21:41 of a Game 6 after losing Games 4 and 5 and having to avoid elimination on the road. And we’ll never know whether these Rangers could have refocused the way those Rangers could after Messier’s magical performance of May 25, 1994 and come out on top in a double-overtime Game 7 two nights later.
The narrative following the 2-1 loss that brought the Blueshirts’ season to a close June 1 was that the Panthers were better. Too big, too strong, too committed to their system for the Rangers to overcome them; the implication being that losing to Florida was inevitable before the puck dropped for Game 1.
Except the 1993-94 Devils finished with 106 points (in an 84-game season), four fewer than the 2023-24 Panthers did. They too were big and deep and seemed to possess everything, including a Hall of Fame goaltender and an on-ice system that frustrated and shut down opponents, which, like these Panthers, they played to near-perfection. Like these Panthers, those Devils had those Rangers looking like they were finished, all the way up to the waning minutes of the second period of Game 6.
The comparable paths that seemingly bound the two Blueshirts teams together across time finally diverged on a Saturday night in Sunrise, when these Rangers – like those Rangers, Presidents Trophy winners – responded nothing like the champions did. For those old enough to have experienced the 1994 run, it’s sometimes forgotten that in between Mike Richter’s spectacular effort in keeping the score at 2-0 amidst a Devils onslaught for the first half of Game 6, and Messier’s third-period hat trick, the 1994 edition started to control the play, banging against New Jersey’s vaunted neutral-zone trap over and over until cracks started to show.
One of those opened up a lane for a Messier drop pass to Kovalev, who rifled home a perfect shot past Martin Brodeur with 1:41 remaining in the second, cutting the deficit to one and sparking a change of course in that contest – and, as it turned out, league history.
While the six games of the 2024 East Final were indeed close, five of them being decided by one goal and three in OT, the differences were stark. There was no Messier, he of the five Stanley Cups with the Edmonton Oilers and captain of those Blueshirts, to drive the Rangers through the tough times. No Leetch, who shook off a bizarre benching by coach Mike Keenan in Game 4 to deliver a goal and two assists in Games 6 and 7. No depth wild card like Stephane Matteau, who scored two OT goals amongst his three in the series, including the Game 7 wraparound that finished New Jersey and stamped his name in NHL lore.
There’s little question that these Rangers weren’t constructed nearly as well as those Rangers were to make it to 16 postseason wins. The almost pathological refusal to acknowledge the need to get bigger and stronger for the playoff grind – as the 1994 Rangers did in a series of critical trade deadline deals – has approached punchline status recently. The story this year was the same as it was in the East Final against the Tampa Bay Lightning two years ago – the Blueshirts once again couldn’t get to the front of the net, kept to the outside in the offensive zone by the brawny Panthers, unable to generate close-in chances and sustained pressure around the goal mouth.
Rangers Didn’t Lose Because of Panthers’ Style of Play
Yet the physical dimensions of the roster are hardly the only reason why these Rangers failed. Messier, Graves, Kovalev, Matteau and co. were indeed big dudes, but they also endlessly challenged a Devils defense that included Scott Stevens and Ken Daneyko, refusing to be kept to the walls or controlled by New Jersey’s mucking up of the neutral zone. The will of that team was on display right alongside the skill.
The same can’t be said of this group, made up of upstanding character players who proved to be very good, but unable to impose themselves on the conference final the way the 1994 edition did. Those Rangers refused to be a victim of New Jersey’s system, while these Rangers ended up being the latest casualty of Florida’s.
Again, though, it’s not just “the system.” Every team plays a style designed to stop the opponent. It’s having players who rise to the occasion, something that’s actually pretty rare amongst stars. Messier was one of the game’s great playoff performers, his 295 points in 236 postseason games second only to longtime teammate Wayne Gretzky’s 382. Leetch was the Conn Smythe winner in 1994 with 34 points and a plus-19 rating in 23 games. Kovalev had 21 points in those 23 contests and excelled in the postseason throughout his 19-year career, posting 100 points in 123 games.
The 2024 edition had nothing of the sort. Panarin is a wonderful player, perhaps the best free-agent signing in team history, but despite finishing these playoffs with 15 points in 16 games, he went missing in a series again, goalless in the six East Final games until he scored with 1:40 remaining in the finale. It was reminiscent of his goalless performance against the Devils in last year’s first round, a great regular-season player once again unable to translate his brilliant creativity to the postseason. Panarin isn’t suddenly going to become a great playoff performer as he ages; with 73 postseason contests under his belt, he would have done that already.
Related: Panthers Beat Rangers in Game 6 to Advance to Stanley Cup Final
Ditto for Mika Zibanejad, the club’s ostensible No. 1 center who had no goals and two assists against the Panthers and went the last 11 games without scoring. Kreider, the Rangers’ all-time leading playoff goal scorer, delivered one of the great playoff efforts in franchise history by dispatching the Carolina Hurricanes in Round 2 with a third-period natural hat trick, reminiscent of Messier’s moment – and then largely disappeared, with one goal and one assist in the conference final.
Providing an unintentional yet painfully consistent reminder of what was missing for the Rangers in the series was Messier’s presence as an in-studio commentator on the TV broadcasts, still looking like he could pull his No. 11 sweater back on and take the ice for his former team. It had to make for wistful moments for long-time fans who looked back at that special time this season as the stretch without a Cup passed the big 3-0 mark.
“We defended hard, but they come at you in waves,” said defenseman Adam Fox, who clearly was not 100 percent physically and thus couldn’t approach his predecessor Leetch’s impact, his playoff goal drought now stretching to May 30, 2022.
Far be it for anyone to tell the 2021 Norris Trophy winner otherwise, but all good teams do that. The 1994 Devils did it. Those Rangers had the fortitude to weather and overcome it. The Blueshirts of 2024 didn’t.
Rangers GM Drury Faces Tall Order as Pursuit of Stanley Cup Continues
The championship chase will go on, with childhood-Rangers-fan-turned-general manager Chris Drury set to resume the quest this summer. Despite the desperate need for a new look, changes to a roster filled with long-term contracts and little salary-cap space will likely have to be subtle yet shrewd, with several young core players due extensions – none more critical than Igor Shesterkin, who did his best Richter impression in these playoffs and is set to cash in after next season.
Can Drury apply the lessons learned not only from the Panthers series, but from the team he celebrated hoisting the Cup as a 17-year-old growing up in Trumbull, Conn.? Will he make the Rangers bigger and tougher, like the Panthers are and the 1994 Blueshirts were after their trade deadline?
A significantly bigger challenge will be simultaneously finding guys who can produce in the playoffs – not unlike Drury did across his 12-year career, including an 11-goal, five-assist effort in 2001 to help the Colorado Avalanche win the championship. It won’t be easy with so much of this very-good-but-not-great team’s core locked in.
The waiting continues, Rangers announcer Sam Rosen would say in a variation of his famous call of the spring of 1994. After yet another run at the Cup came up short, how long is anybody’s guess – leaving the legends of 30 years ago to watch and wait as well.
