SUNRISE, Fla. — It’s become an annual rite of passage, sort of like Daylight Savings Time. But instead of moving the clock ahead by an hour every spring, the Rangers add another year to their Stanley Cup drought.

It will be 31 years since the last ride up the Canyon of Heroes for the Rangers, who were a very good team this year and a very good team through the first two rounds of the playoffs but could not quite sustain it against a bigger, stronger, more physical team.

The Blueshirts battled here while facing extinction for the first time in Saturday’s Game 6. There was no quit in New York. But the Panthers were too tough. They never took their eyes off the prize. They are the first losing Cup finalist to return to the scene of the crime since the 2009 Penguins were able to reverse their fortune against Detroit.

There will be no next series for head coach Peter Laviolette, his staff, and the athletes for which to prepare. There may be another communal hug or two along the way, but there are no more practices and no more games. This is going to hurt and it is going to linger.

For while the Blueshirts took great strides this season in moving from a first-round exit to the NHL’s final four after setting franchise records for wins and points in a season, they were unable to take the final step. Their best was not good enough.

The core featuring Chris Kreider, Igor Shesterkin, Mika Zibanejad, Jacob Trouba, Adam Fox, Ryan Lindgren, K’Andre Miller, Ryan Lindgren, Filip Chytil, Alexis Lafreniere and Kaapo Kakko has been in place since 2020-21. Vincent Trocheck joined last year.

The 2022 team got 10 playoff wins and hit the wall. This team got 10 playoff wins and hit the wall. That equates to six too few both times. The club’s window of contention has not closed, but there will be changes, possibly a substantial one or two as GM Chris Drury attacks the offseason and attempts to complete a puzzle that is still missing some pieces — bigger and jagged-edge ones, at that.

It was 2-1 for the Panthers in Saturday’s Game 6 to advance to the Cup final for the second consecutive year. The Rangers competed, they forced the Puddy Tats to play a fair amount in their own end. But they could not generate enough offense. They could not score on the power play.

It was just 1-0 after two on Sam Bennett’s first-period goal at 19:11 but the Blueshirts could not break through on Sergei Bobrovsky off a handful of isolated chances. The Blueshirts never got Bob out of his comfort zone despite a late consolation goal from Artemi Panarin with the extra attacker.

The Rangers went with a different lineup for the 10th straight game. Following the two consecutive defeats in which the club scored only one goal at five-on-five, head coach Peter Laviolette put his forwards into a blender.

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Alex Wennberg, who’d played exclusively at center since being acquired at the trade deadline, moved up to right wing on the line with Zibanejad and Kreider. The Panarin-Trocheck-Lafreniere unit remained intact, but the Blueshirts moved Chytil into the middle for the first time since his Game 3 return against Carolina.

Chytil — who hasn’t played center since going down with a suspected concussion on Nov. 2 — skated between Barclay Goodrow and Kakko on the third line while Jonny Brodzinski stepped into the lineup to center Will Cuylle and Jack Roslovic on the fourth line.

It marked Brodzinski’s third game of the tournament and first since the Carolina Game 6 clincher. Brodzinski replaced healthy scratch Matt Rempe, who got only four shifts worth 2:43 back home in Game 5.

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The Blueshirts had their third straight impressive first period. They won pucks, beat the Florida forecheck and were able to generate both time and speed through the neutral zone and were able to create space in front of Bobrovsky with a majority of zone time.

But the Rangers could not beat Bobrovsky until the end. Bobrovosky had the task of going up against Tampa Bay’s Andrei Vasilevskiy and Boston’s Jeremy Swayman in the first two rounds before taking on Shesterkin.

Roslovic, all but invisible since the Washington series, had the Rangers’ best chance but he missed a wide open right side on a rebound left on a left wing shot from Kakko. That was at the 11:30 mark of the first period while the Blueshirts were working on a delayed penalty that had been drawn by Brodzinski.

The first power play unit came on. The first power play unit went off after about 1:05. The second unit added little. Another chance to seize added momentum was wasted with this dysfunctional power play that was 1-for-15 in the series and 2-for-25 starting with the third game of the Carolina series.

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Slowly, the Puddy Tats leveled it and took control, capitalizing on turnovers off cross-ice passes to counter and pin the Blueshirts in their own end. The Rangers desperately attempted to fend off the push, Shesterkin made a pair of pressure saves, but the Panthers persevered and were able to take a 1-0 lead when Bennett blasted one past Shesterkin with 49 seconds remaining in the period on a two-on-two rush that followed a weak clear by Erik Gustafsson.

The Blueshirts regained their equilibrium in a second period that had more scrambling than the opening 20 minutes and featured fewer loud scoring opportunities, though when the Puddy Tats had the most glorious opportunity of the period, Shesterkin silenced them.

It was still 1-0 with 4:30 remaining. The Rangers had cut down on unforced errors. But not completely. Because when Miller committed a grievous giveaway, Bennett turned into a Matthew Tkachuk breakaway.

Miller, racing back, got Tkachuk’s glove on a slash that would not be called on a goal that would not be scored. Instead, it was a left pad save by Shesterkin. Mike Richter couldn’t have done it any better.

The Blueshirts had a couple of isolated chances over the last couple of minutes of the period that were not enough.

Still, though, it was only 1-0.

Still, though, the Rangers were in it.

Until they were not.

Add another year to the drought.