Panthers vs Rangers Eastern Conference final Game 4 recap

Sam Reinhart has been in this spot so many times before — camped out in the slot with his Florida Panthers on the power play, waiting for a pass to come from behind the net that he can rip past the goaltender.

And in one of their biggest moments yet in the Stanley Cup playoffs, the Panthers pulled off that play to perfection.

Reinhart’s power-play goal 1:12 into overtime, on a pass from Aleksander Barkov, lifted the Panthers to a critical 3-2 win in Game 4 of the Eastern Conference final against the New York Rangers on Tuesday at Amerant Bank Arena.

The win evened the best-of-7 series at 2-2 and gives the Panthers some needed breathing room as the series shifts back to Madison Square Garden for Game 5 on Thursday.

“If he’s open, obviously we’re going to look for him,” Barkov said. “If he’s in the slot, just get the puck to him. Obviously he’s scored a lot of goals from there and works really hard in the practices shooting from there. You want to get the puck to him and that’s what happened.”

Reinhart finished the regular season with an NHL-best and Panthers single-season franchise-record 27 power-play goals, with the majority of them coming from that spot in the slot. In the month of January alone, Reinhart had 10 power-play goals in a span of 13 games.

His power-play production dipped following the All-Star Break, however, with Reinhart scoring just seven times on the man advantage in the final 33 regular season games.

But that didn’t faze him. The production would return.

It did on Tuesday.

“When you go through a month like we had in January, when everything seemed to be going, it’s obviously something they’ve been trying to take away,” said Reinhart, who now has eight goals this postseason — including four on the power-play. “I’ve felt like we’ve done a good job of, if they’re taking that away, there’s something else that’s going to be open. … Our pace has increased.”

And Reinhart’s goal helped cap a needed performance from the Panthers as they leveled the series against the Rangers, who had won Games 2 and 3, both of which also went to overtime.

The Panthers came into Game 4 knowing they needed to play with more of an edge — a “growl,” as coach Paul Maurice described it following their second consecutive overtime loss in to the New York Rangers that put them in an early hole in the series.

After a spotty first period during which the Rangers took a 1-0 lead on Vincent Trocheck’s power-play goal from the high slot, the Panthers came to life in the second period.

Florida put up 13 shot attempts in the first six minutes of the middle frame alone, peppering Rangers goaltender Igor Shesterkin with a pair of flurries before they finally broke through for two goals in a span of three-and-a-half minutes.

Sam Bennett tied the game 8:45 into the period when he found his own rebound after a wrist shot while speeding toward the net and jammed the puck past Shesterkin from the side.

And then Carter Verhaeghe gave Florida a 2-1 lead at the 12:16 mark on the power play after a Matthew Tkachuk centering pass went off Verhaeghe, then off Rangers defenseman Ryan Lindgren’s back and then into the air before Verhaeghe batted a backhanded shot past Shesterkin.

“Any time you’re at home and you get a goal, it gives you a ton of momentum,” Verhaeghe said. “That’s kind of what happened with Benny’s goal. A huge goal at a critical time to get us the momentum.”

The Panthers continued to sustain the offense pressure in the third period only for the Rangers to get the lone goal of the frame with Alexis Lafraniere beating Bobrovsky from up close 3:28 into the period.

It felt reminiscent to how Game 3 unfolded — Florida dominating but not able to fully put the game away.

In those final two periods of regulation Tuesday, the Panthers had a dominating advantage in shot attempts (68-17), shots on goal (27-10), scoring chances (35-8) and high-danger chances (15-2).

“We came back as a unit,” Reinhart said, “and really demanded that puck.”

They did enough to neutralize the Rangers after the game got tied and then Reinhart took full advantage in overtime to seal the game and even the series.

This story was originally published May 28, 2024, 11:13 PM.

Jordan McPherson covers the Miami Marlins and high school sports for the Miami Herald. He attended the University of Florida and covered the Gators athletic program for five years before joining the Herald staff in December 2017.