Game 7 specialist New York Rangers refuse to quit in these NHL playoffs

The New York Rangers won’t be given much of a chance to beat the Tampa Bay Lightning to make the Stanley Cup final. That is no big surprise. The Lightning have won twice as many Stanley Cups in the last two years as the Rangers have won in the last, um, 82.

But the Rangers have made it to the Eastern Conference finals for the first time since 2015 – when they lost at home to the Lightning in the seventh game – and New York seems to be getting excited, which is good for the NHL, or any other professional league, for that matter.

There really is, as the T-shirt that the high-scoring veteran forward Chris Kreider wore Tuesday to a news conference read, “no quit in New York.” The Rangers have faced elimination five times so far in the playoffs, and they have won all five games, including two Game 7s.

They scored two power-play goals in the first eight minutes and walloped the Carolina Hurricanes 6-2 in Game 7 of that series on Monday night. It was the first home playoff loss for the Canes, who had a better regular-season record than the Rangers.

“The guys love playing for this group,” said the 31-year-old Kreider, who has scored eight playoff goals after pumping in 52 goals in the regular season, easily a career high. “It’s a tight-knit group. You see the guys doing the little things to help us win hockey games. We want to keep playing.”

Kreider is the only player who was around the last time the Rangers got this far. They’d made it to the finals in 2014, only to lose to Los Angeles, and their chances of returning in 2015 looked quite good until the Lightning shut them out at Madison Square Garden in Game S7.

The goaltender of that team, Henrik Lundqvist, has retired, and the general manager Jeff Gorton is not around,