If there’s ever any solace to take from a tough loss in a tournament, perhaps it’s that you lost to the best, or the eventual champions, or whatever.
Unless you’re the Rangers, who needed two wins in five games to advance to the Stanley Cup Finals, but ended up losing four straight to the defending two-time Stanley Cup Champion Tampa Bay Lightning, who now are four wins over Colorado away from a three-pear.
“Right now, it's not easy,” defenseman Jacob Trouba said after Saturday’s 2-1 loss in Game 6 that ended the Rangers’ season. “I'm sure we'll think about it and reflect, but right now, it's not a good feeling.”
“Empty,” added Chris Kreider when asked how he felt. “Obviously very sad. They got timely goals, but it felt like we were in every game.”
They were, as two of the losses were one-goal games, and Game 5 was tied late before a go-ahead goal and an empty-netter made it 3-1 – after the Rangers had a great chance to go up 2-1 on a centering pass that Ryan Strome simply fanned on.
“We would’ve liked to generate a little more (offense) but one-goal games could usually go either way, a chance here or there,” defenseman Adam Fox said. “Obviously good goalies and they’re an experienced team, obviously they’ve been here before.”
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Perhaps, as head coach Gerard Gallant surmised, the young Rangers ran out of gas, Game 6 being their 20th of the playoffs in 40 days.
Mika Zibanejad rejected the idea, but Gallant knew what he saw in his team.
“There’s no doubt it showed up,” Gallant said. “When you got seven and seven (games in the first two rounds), there’s no break. Guys don’t get a chance to heal.”
To try to take some bright side, though, Fox – who won the Norris Trophy last season – took away from his first extended playoff action that this hopefully won’t be it for the young Blueshirts.
“It was obviously a lot of good experience,” Fox said. “Wished for a better ending but definitely promising for our team.”
And, really, getting to 20 games is an accomplishment when you think back to the first round, which could’ve ended with a near-sweep.
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“You know you look back and we could’ve been done in five games in that first round, but we battled, it took everyone,” Fox said. “It’s a nice young mix of guys in this room and also older guys who help and lead the way for us. It’s a great locker room and I think our battle when we were down in (the previous two) series really showed that.”
Moral victories don’t win Stanley Cups, though, and after watching the Finals, the Rangers will get to work over the summer looking to get back to the Promised Land. A third straight season with a New York team in the Final Four sadly yielded its third straight exit in the penultimate round, and with several players headed for free agency, the bottom of the roster at least may look a lot different come the fall.
For now, though, that can all wait as the Blueshirts try to process what could’ve been.
“It’s like, denying this right now. I don’t honestly have much to say. Just empty,” Mika Zibanejad said. “These are the games we all wanted to play…don’t want it to be over.”
Follow Lou DiPietro on Twitter: @LouDiPietroWFAN
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