There wasn’t a ton of good from the Rangers’ Game 1 loss in the Eastern Conference Final, but they were still in striking distance with under four minutes to go in the third period.

But then, disaster hit on Wednesday night.

After Rangers goalie Igor Shesterkin came out of the net aggressively to play the puck, the Panthers sniper Carter Verhaeghe ended up with the rubber on his stick on the far-side boards, looking for a cross-ice pass to the weak side.

Alexis Lafreniere, in an attempt to stop the pass from making its way to Matthew Tkachuk, tipped the puck with the edge of his stick blade, unintentionally putting the puck in between Shesterkin’s pads and over the goal line, giving the Panthers a 2-0 edge, one that felt insurmountable with 3:48 left in the period at Madison Square Garden.

“[Shesterkin] played it to the wall but to Verhaeghe and it’s tipped in by the Rangers — Lafreniere,” ESPN play-by-play man Sean McDonough called it on the broadcast. “2-0 Florida on an own-goal.”

To make matters worse, this came after the Rangers had a golden opportunity to tie the game on a power play following a Panthers too many men on the ice call, but Florida netminder Sergei Bobrovsky made the two saves necessary to keep New York out of the net.

Sam Bennett soon iced things at 18:41 with an empty-netter, truly sealing the Rangers’ fate with a 3-0 defeat.

The Blueshirts had just 23 shots on goal all game, which obviously does not count the not-so-fortuitous redirection from Lafreniere.

“I think we can play better. I don’t think that was the best version of ourselves,” head coach Peter Laviolette said after the game. “And so we’ll look to what they did, see what we can do better in all areas of the game. I think there’s more for us to give, and more for us to do out there. Game 1 didn’t go our way and now we’ll have to focus on Game 2.”

Now, the Rangers will look to Friday, when they hope to put the puck in the right net next time around.