Panthers play Rangers in Eastern Conference finals

The Florida Panthers will play the New York Rangers in the Eastern Conference finals.

Florida eliminated the Boston Bruins on Friday with a 2-1 win in Game 6 of the second round at TD Garden in Boston, a day after New York beat the Carolina Hurricanes with a 5-3 win in Game 6 at PNC Arena in Raleigh had eliminated. North Carolina.

The Panthers are in the conference finals for the second year in a row; Last season, they lost to the Vegas Golden Knights in five games in the Stanley Cup Final. The Rangers advanced for the second time in three seasons. They were defeated by the Tampa Bay Lightning in six games in 2022.

The Rangers (55-23-4), the No. 1 seed in the Metropolitan Division, have home-field advantage over the Panthers (52-24-6), the No. 1 seed in the Atlantic Division.

“I don’t know the schedule of what’s going to happen here and when we’ll be called back to the table for Game 1,” New York coach Peter Laviolette said Thursday. “It's exciting and I think everyone is excited.” But I think we were lucky with the end of the season and the end of the first round. There was a bit of rest and almost like a mini training camp to prepare us for the next opponent.

“It worked really well. I think we'll have a few days. I think we'll get some of that again, which is nice, and then we'll be ready. When they tell us it's time to go, we're ready to go.

Matthew Tkachuk leads the Panthers in the Stanley Cup Playoffs with 14 points (four goals, 10 assists), and Aleksander Barkov has 13 points (five goals, eight assists). Carter Verhaeghe has 10 points (six goals, four assists). Sergei Bobrovsky started every Panthers playoff game, posting an 8-3 record with a 2.51 goals-against average and .896 save percentage.

The Panthers were 2-0-1 against the Rangers in the regular season, winning 4-3 in Florida on December 29th and 4-2 in New York on March 4th. They lost 4-3 on the road March 23. Florida was led by Sam Reinhart with four goals and five points. Verhaeghe had two goals and three assists, Barkov had five assists and Tkachuk had four points (one goal, three assists). Bobrovsky started all three games and had a GAA of 2.59 and a save percentage of .919.

“Every series is going to be tough and we try to take it game by game,” Rangers forward Mika Zibanejad said Thursday. “Now just get some rest and we'll see who we're playing against and we'll start preparing.

Zibanejad (three goals, 11 assists) and Vincent Trocheck (six goals, eight assists) each have 14 points and lead the Rangers in the playoffs. Artemi Panarin has 11 (four goals, seven assists) and Chris Kreider (seven goals, three assists) and Alexis Lafrenière (four goals, six assists) each have 10. Igor Shesterkin has played all 10 games for New York and is 8-2 :0 with a goals-against average of 2.40 and a save percentage of .923.

The Rangers lost 1-2-0 to the Panthers in the regular season. Panarin had four points (three goals, one assist), Trocheck had four assists and Will Cuylle scored two goals. Shesterkin was 1-1-0 with a 2.91 GAA and .898 save percentage. Backup Jonathan Quick allowed four goals on 33 shots in his only start, the 4-3 loss.

The Rangers and Panthers have played in the playoffs once, in the 1997 Eastern Conference Quarterfinals, which New York won in five games.

The Rangers last reached the Stanley Cup Final in 2014, when they lost five games to the Los Angeles Kings.

NHL.com senior writer Dan Rosen contributed to this report