Anton Lundell broke a tie on a deflected shot with 9:38 left and the Florida Panthers moved within a win of returning to the Stanley Cup Final, beating the New York Rangers 3-2 in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference finals Thursday evening.
Gustav Forsling and Sam Bennett also scored, and Sergei Bobrovsky made 25 saves to help the Panthers – who lost to Vegas in last year’s championship series – win their second straight best-of-series series after losing Games 2 and 3 in overtime.
Chris Kreider and Alexis Lafreniere scored for Rangers, and Igor Shesterkin made 34 saves in another great effort. The Presidents’ Trophy winners need to win two in a row to return to the finals for the first time since 2014. Mike Zibanejad had two assists.
The Panthers can end the series Saturday in Florida. If a seventh game is necessary, it will be at Madison Square Garden, where the Panthers have won twice this series.
The go-ahead came after the Rangers lost the puck in Florida. Eetu Luostarien got the puck and found Lundell at the Rangers blue line. His shot from the right circle beat Shesterkin, although it may have been off the stick of New York defenseman Braden Schneider.
Bennett added an empty-net goal with 1:52 to go and it proved necessary when Lafreniere scored with 50 seconds to play. The Rangers never got another chance.
Kreider and Zibanejad, who were winless in the first four games of the series, combined to give New York the lead with a shorthanded goal at 2:04 of the second period.
Kreider interrupted a Florida play at the blue line, pushed the puck to Zibanejad and then took a return pass to enter the offensive zone and beat Bobrovsky with a nifty backhand move, drawing a roar that seemed to shake Madison Square Garden.
It was Kreider’s eighth goal in the playoffs and the Rangers’ sixth shorthanded, tying the team’s 1978–79 postseason record. New York advanced to the Stanley Cup Final, losing to Montreal in five games.
Forsling equalized just over six minutes later, taking a perfect pass from Bennett and beating Shesterkin with a backhander that the goalkeeper deflected, but not enough to keep him out of the net. It was the defender’s fourth goal and eleventh point in the play-offs.
Both teams had big chances in the scoreless first period, with Bobrovsky holding off Filip Chytil and Vincent Trocheck from close range, and Shesterkin turning Kevin Stenlund aside and getting a little help from a post on Bennett’s backhander from close range.
