Rangers' playoff hopes end with loss to Hurricanes, first time missing postseason since 2021

RALEIGH, N.C. — In two of the last three seasons, the Rangers knocked the Carolina Hurricanes out of the playoffs in this very building, known then as the PNC Center. On Saturday, the Hurricanes got them back.

Carolina’s 7-3 victory over the Rangers in the building now known as the Lenovo Center, in front of a national TV audience, officially ended the Rangers’ hopes of reaching the playoffs, completing a stunning fall from grace for a Blueshirts team that won the Presidents’ Trophy a season ago and made it to the Eastern Conference finals before falling to eventual Stanley Cup champion Florida.

Igor Shesterkin stopped 21 of 26 shots. Leading 5-3, Carolina scored two empty-net goals in the final 3:33 to seal it.

“You come into the season, your ultimate goal is to win the Stanley Cup. And you’ve got to make the playoffs to do that,’’ said Adam Fox, who scored his 10th goal. “We came short of that.’’

“It’s disappointing for everybody,’’ said coach Peter Laviolette, who guided the Rangers to the Presidents’ Trophy last season but likely will be fired after this season. “That wasn’t anybody’s plan coming into the year, especially coming off of last year. Yet here we are. We had opportunities in the last 20 games to make our own noise and make our own way, and we didn’t do that. So it’s on us. We needed to be better.’’

The Rangers made the playoffs in each of the previous three seasons, accumulating more than 100 points in each of them, and reached the conference finals in 2022 and 2024. Both times, they beat Carolina in the second round to get to the conference finals.

“Maybe that’s why it’s a little bit harder this year, because we had a very successful regular season last year,’’ Artemi Panarin said. “Everyone expected that [again]. We expected that from ourselves.’’

The Rangers (37-36-7, 81 points) still have two games left in the regular season. They will visit Florida on Monday to complete the current road trip and close the season with a home game Thursday against the Tampa Bay Lightning.

After that, general manager Chris Drury — presuming his own job is safe — will have a lot of work to do in the summer to try to make sure this turns into just a one-year absence from the postseason.

The Rangers went into Saturday hoping for a victory and a Montreal loss later in the day, which would have extended their season for at least another couple of days. But they trailed 4-1 after two periods before making things interesting in the third with a couple of goals and some increased physicality.

After Carolina’s Jordan Staal made it 5-1 with his goal at 3:45 of the period, J.T. Miller scored on a power play at 6:07 and Fox scored on a backhander at 9:02 to make it 5-3.

A scuffle broke out after that goal when Vincent Trocheck, who had been battling with defenseman Sean Walker in front of Carolina goalie Pyotr Kochetkov, cross-checked Walker.

Trocheck and Jordan Martinook ended up with penalties and Carolina coach Rod Brind’Amour challenged the goal, alleging goaltender interference.

The challenge failed, but the Rangers couldn’t score on the ensuing power play. Carolina got empty-net goals by Martinook and Logan Stankoven to close out the scoring.

Carolina (47-27-5, 99 points) took a 4-0 lead on goals by Jalen Chatfield, Seth Jarvis, Jackson Blake and Mark Jankowski before Will Cuylle scored his 20th goal of the season with 15.5 seconds left in the second period.

Once Drury settles on Laviolette’s replacement (who would be his third coaching hire in four-plus seasons on the job), his top priority will be figuring out how best to remove forward Chris Kreider, the longest-tenured Ranger and one of the franchise’s greatest players, from the roster.

Kreider is third on the team’s all-time goals list with 325 and is tied for first (with Camille Henry) on the team’s all-time power-play goals list with 116. But since the story leaked in November that Drury had sent a memo to the 31 other general managers that he was looking to trade Kreider and Jacob Trouba, it’s been clear that Kreider’s time with the Rangers is up.

Kreider revealed to the media — in opposition to team policy — that he was battling back problems,  and it’s hard to imagine teams wanting to trade for a guy with back trouble who turns 34 on April 30 and has two years left on his contract at a cap hit of $6.5 million.

There’s much more on the to-do list after that, though.

By Colin Stephenson

colin.stephenson@newsday.comColinSNewsday

Colin Stephenson covers the Rangers for Newsday. He has spent more than two decades covering the NHL and just about every sports team in the New York metropolitan area.