If Rangers fans were looking for another parallel to the team’s 1994 championship run, they got it on Thursday night.
The Rangers picked up another dramatic win over the Hurricanes in the second round of the playoffs for their seventh consecutive victory and are now 7-0 in the postseason, a feat they hadn’t accomplished since their last run to the Stanley Cup three decades ago.
The magical run culminated in the Blueshirts’ first Stanley Cup championship in 54 years and also featured a Knicks run to the NBA finals, though the latter fell short of capturing a second championship that year for New York City.
That year the Rangers walloped the rival Islanders in a four-game sweep in the first round before they won the first three games of their second-round series with the Capitals.
Washington managed to win Game 4 to force one final showdown that the Rangers took 4-3 in Game 5 at the Garden.
The similarities between the 1994 runs for both the Knicks and the Rangers have been hard to ignore over the past week as MSG has been the place to be with the first two games of each series taking place in Midtown Manhattan.
But the Rangers will look to avoid having to play the Hurricanes beyond four games when they go into Game 4 with the 3-0 lead and a chance to punch their ticket to the Eastern Conference Finals early.
Thursday’s win was also a bit of NHL history with the Rangers becoming the first team since the 2008 Penguins — which made it to the Stanley Cup Final that year — to go 7-0 to start the playoffs.
The perfect playoff start appeared to be in jeopardy on Thursday night after Andrei Svechnikov scored with 1:36 left in regulation to force overtime.
But Artemi Panarin played hero, beating Pyotr Kochetkov 1:42 into the overtime period to lift the Rangers to victory.
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