Had the Rangers survived Game 4 the way they somehow escaped Game 3 in Florida with a win, the question would be a much different one.
If the Rangers were entering Thursday night’s Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Final at the Garden with a 3-1 series lead over the Panthers, we might be wondering this right now: How much better might the Blueshirts be if their star goal-scorers were producing?
Those possibilities would have been tantalizing considering how close the Rangers are to advancing to the Stanley Cup Final in pursuit of their first title in 30 years — six wins, to be exact.
Instead, in the wake of Tuesday night’s 3-2 overtime loss in Florida, which knotted the series up at a stressful 2-2 entering Game 5, we are left to wonder this: How much longer can the Rangers survive without offensive production from Artemi Panarin, Chris Kreider and Mika Zibanejad?
This has officially become a thing in this series for the Rangers.
The three combined for 114 goals and 267 points in the regular season. And, through four games of this series against the Panthers, they’ve combined for no goals and three assists.
Panthers goalie Sergei Bobrovsky, with a Tuesday night assist, has one point in the series — which is one more than Zibanejad and Kreider have combined.
Panarin, who scored 49 goals and had 120 points in the regular season — both career highs — has three assists, two of which came in Game 3.
Kreider, who scored 39 goals and had 75 points in the regular season, doesn’t have a single point in this series, nor does Zibanejad, who had 26 goals and 72 points in the regular season.
Kreider has been largely invisible since he delivered that epic third-period natural hat trick in Game 6 against Carolina to send the Blueshirts into the ECF.
But that’s the last time Kreider scored.
It feels like the last time we heard from Panarin was when he scored the game-winner with that acrobatic redirect in overtime to beat the Hurricanes in Carolina to give the Rangers a 3-0 series lead.
That was the last goal Panarin scored.
Zibanejad last scored 10 games ago, when he put home a pair in the first period of the Rangers’ 4-3 win over Carolina in Game 1 of that series.
These are three players who essentially carried the Rangers offensively all season and they’ve gone dry. Now, because of that, the Rangers are in a precarious spot, having been grossly outplayed by the Panthers in the two games in Florida and having ceded the momentum of the series.
As a result of the Panarin-Kreider-Zibanejad scoring drought, other players, such as Alexis Lafreniere, Barclay Goodrow and Vincent Trocheck, have emerged with clutch goals. But the Rangers need more if they want to advance to the next series and certainly if they want to win the Cup.
In the process, the Rangers have become dangerously too reliant on Igor Shesterkin, their goalie with superpowers to make clutch stop after clutch stop. But Shesterkin’s superpowers can last only so long — evidenced by Tuesday’s loss.
The Rangers, in large part because their big guns have been stifled, are in jeopardy of wasting what has been a remarkable playoff performance by Shesterkin.
And frustration from their top line has started to show. The most memorable play Kreider made all game on Tuesday night was taking Panthers winger Matthew Tkachuk’s mouthpiece during a scuffle and tossing it toward the fans.
“I told him that was the best play he made all game,’’ Tkachuk, a noted trash-talker on the ice, told reporters with a smile on Wednesday.
“We’re not getting a lot of opportunities to make plays, obviously,” Kreider said after Tuesday’s loss.
“We know what we have to do better,’’ Zibanejad said.
That’ll mean solving Florida’s top defensive pair of Aaron Ekblad and Gustav Forsling. Of the 50:06 of ice time that Zibanejad and Kreider have spent together at five-on-five through the first four games of the series, 30:39 of that time has come against Ekblad and Forsling.
During that head-to-head ice time, Ekblad and Forsling have had a huge advantage in shot attempts (51-17), shots on goal (19-5) and scoring chances (20-7).
“They’re playing great hockey and giving that line nothing,’’ Tkachuck said of Ekblad and Forsling.
Being at home Thursday, the Rangers will have the final chess move on placing players on the ice during stoppages in play, which will allow them to control certain matchups.
But, in 10:16 of five-on-five ice time against Zibanejad and Kreider, the Panthers’ second unit of Brandon Montour and Niko Mikkola also have had success against the two, leading in shot attempts (14-9), shots on goal (5-3) and scoring chances (7-3).
So, it’s up to the Big 3 to break out of this malaise regardless of which players are defending them.
If they don’t, this Rangers run at a first Stanley Cup in 30 years will very likely end before the hoisting of the Cup. There’s no question about that.
