In the end, the New York Rangers’ season ended with a thud. The Tampa Bay Lightning got a 22-save performance from Ben Bishop in a 2-0 series clinching win over the Rangers. The win sends the Bolts to the Stanley Cup Final.
Twenty-two shots on goal for the Rangers; in a game that might have defined them as 
the comeback kids it will be written they failed to rise to the occasion in their final two homes in the 2014-15 season.
They lost their two home games by 2-0 counts.
The Bolts won after a 7-3 shelling by the Rangers in Game 6 in Tampa.
“You don’t want to give up that many goals at home, but I felt good with the way I was playing,” Bishop said. “Obviously they got some bounces last game and some open looks. I feel pretty confident in this building, and we’ve done well against them all year, so I wasn’t too worried about it. I was just looking forward to getting out there again.”
Alex Killorn and Ondrej Palat scored for the Lightning.
Henrik Lundqvist made 23 saves in the loss, his first Game 7 loss after six straight wins.
“I told the group here we’re a great group and we’re right there,” Lundqvist said. “The last three, four years, I think we are one of the teams that played the most games in the playoffs. We’re right there. It’s a great group to be a part of, and we worked extremely hard. This year was not enough, and we were so close. That’s what makes it special to go through this, but it’s also extremely tough when you don’t come up with the result.”
New York’s Ryan McDonagh played a little more than 16 minutes in the game on a broken foot.
Mac has been playing on a broken foot, and we’ve sort of got caught there after warm-up,” Rangers coach Alain Vigneault said. “The freezing hadn’t kicked in, so we weren’t sure if he was going to be able to play.
“So at that time we made the decision to go with seven. He went back in right at the start of the first period, and it kicked in a little bit.
But he played through a lot of pain.”
After winning the President’s trophy with 113 points, the Rangers lost their last three home games; something they had not done all season.
Vigneault was asked after the game about what was missing from the roster or what was needed. He deftly side-stepped the question.
“Yeah, I’m not going to get into that tonight. We just were basically one period away from going to the Stanley Cup Final,” Vigneault said. “Our guys competed real hard, battled real hard, and this is very disappointing to us, to our fans. So we’re going to take a little bit of time here to contemplate on our season and get back to you on a better day for an answer on that.”
In New York, winning is for now. It does not mean much to prepare for the future and the Rangers may have lost this year but for how long will they be able to keep this team together and should they?
The recriminations will begin if they haven’t already. The Rangers’ fans are not happy.
For this year, the Tampa Bay Lightning will represent the Eastern Conference in the Stanley Cup Final.
You must be logged in to post a comment.