The Tampa Bay Lightning and New York Rangers are experiencing differing feelings heading into the final game of a six-month regular-season marathon.
While the Lightning are tuning up for another postseason appearance and excited for the potential of a deep run, the Rangers, coming off three consecutive seasons of at least 107 points, are closing the doors on one of the more disappointing seasons in franchise history Thursday night in New York.
The teams are meeting for the second time this month. Tampa Bay (47-26-8, 102 points) rolled to a 5-1 rout in New York on April 7, scoring three times on the power play and tallied three goals in a span of 1:45 in the first period as Brayden Point, Nikita Kucherov and Jake Guentzel all posted three-point nights.
Tampa Bay clinched second in the Atlantic Division and home-ice advantage Tuesday night when it rolled to a 5-1 rout of the defending Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers as Point, Guentzel and Kucherov combined for three goals and three assists.
“We’ve put ourselves in a position to vie for a Stanley Cup,” Lightning coach Jon Cooper said. “There’s 32 teams. There’s only 16 left, and we’re one of the 16. That’s what we wanted to do. I think every year we get looked at as, OK, their time’s over.’ And every year these guys come back and prove they can do it.
“We have memories ahead of us to make, and so I’m excited to see what we can do in this playoffs.”
Guentzel, Kucherov and Point are all on hot streaks lately to help Tampa Bay get home-ice advantage in the opening round of a full season for the first time since 2019.
Guentzel has 14 goals and 12 assists in his past 24 games and Kucherov will finish with the most points in the NHL for the second straight season and third time in his career. Kucherov has 29 of his 121 points (nine goals, 20 assists) in his past 16 games. Point is wrapping up his third straight 40-goal season and has 10 goals in his past 13 games.
The Rangers (38-36-7, 83 points) were six points out of the second wild card after their second blowout loss to Tampa Bay 10 days ago and are returning from a three-game trip. New York was eliminated with Saturday’s 7-3 loss to the Carolina Hurricanes and is hoping to end with consecutive wins after earning a 5-3 win at Florida on Monday.
The Rangers are the fourth team in NHL history to miss the playoffs after winning the President’s Trophy the previous season and are 7-10-3 in their past 20 games after enduring a stretch of 15 losses in 19 games earlier this season to drop them from playoff contention.
The Rangers will use their season finale to evaluate some of their younger players such as Gabe Perreault, Brett Berard and Matthew Robertson, who made his NHL debut and spent part of it on the top defense pairing with Adam Fox.
The young trio played on a night when the Rangers rallied from a two-goal deficit and saw Vincent Trocheck scored the tiebreaking goal during a penalty kill in the third period.
“We’re still trying to win even though we’re out of the playoffs,” Juuso Parssinen said after the Rangers scored four straight goals for their first multi-goal comeback of the season “You always want to win. We have to be proud and play for our fans even though we’re not making the playoffs.’
–Field Level Media
