The last time the Rangers faced the Panthers, their minds were already on the playoffs.
After a pair of losses to the top team in the Atlantic, the Rangers broke through at the Garden with a 4-3, shootout win over Florida on March 23.
And Vincent Trocheck already saw a series like the upcoming Eastern Conference Final on the horizon.
“Two of the better teams in the East,’’ Trocheck said at the time. “These games are huge late in the season. [They] get you geared up for the playoffs. This is the style of hockey that we’re going to need to play. It goes a long way when you’re able to beat these teams.”
Now, the Rangers have to do it again, as Florida advanced to the Eastern Conference Final for a second straight season.
A year ago, the Panthers beat the Hurricanes to advance to the Stanley Cup Final, where they lost to Vegas.
Following Friday night’s win, head coach Paul Maurice said, “I think we’re a much better team than when we came in here last year on personnel and experience.”
Both teams will soon find out, with Game 1 set for Wednesday night at MSG.
Saturday, before his team left Boston to head home to Florida prior to the start of the series, Maurice called this Rangers squad “the best team in the league.”
“Just very, very fast, [a] very talented team,” Maurice said. “Dynamic off the rush. They’ve got all the spots. They’re the best team in the league. They’ve got the goaltending, [their] forwards and back end are big and strong, and the forwards are very skilled.”
The Rangers are coming off a regular season in which they won the Presidents’ Trophy with a veteran head coach in Peter Laviolette who won a Stanley Cup with Carolina in 2006.
Maurice has coached in the league even longer than Laviolette and has the most regular-season wins of any coach to have never won a Cup.
The two teams have met in the playoffs only once, in 1997, when Florida beat the Rangers in the first round in five games.
This time, a trip to the Cup Final is at stake, and the Panthers are coming off a series in which they won all three road games in Boston — including Friday’s series clincher — so they don’t figure to be daunted by the Madison Square Garden crowd.
“It’s playoff hockey in New York,’’ Panthers winger Matthew Tkachuk said Friday. “It’s a dream. MSG on the road is my favorite rink to play in, just because of the history and everything that has to do with the city of New York.”