The only other time Rangers head coach Gerard Gallant has coached in a conference final was when he was behind the bench for an expansion team in its inaugural season.

Gallant led the Golden Knights to history in 2017-18. Vegas was the first true expansion team in the four major sports to win its division in its first season (not including all-expansion divisions). It became the first team in NHL history to sweep its first playoff series and the third to win multiple series in its first season.

The Golden Knights were ultimately the first team since the 1968 Blues to advance to the Stanley Cup Final in its first year of existence. They fell short of winning it, but Gallant took home the Jack Adams Award, given to the coach “adjudged to have contributed the most to his team’s success.”

Gallant is up for the top coaching honor once again, this time behind the bench of a young and inspiring Rangers club. He has led the Rangers back to the Eastern Conference Final for the first time since 2015 in one of the organization’s most impressive seasons in recent memory.

“Well I was fortunate enough to get there a few years ago with Vegas,” the 58-year-old said before the Rangers’ series-opener against the Lightning on Wednesday night at Madison Square Garden. “Again, it was sort of an underdog type of team that nobody expected to get there. We had a lot of fun. It’s a long journey. We had a lot of fun. We battled hard every game. We had a great group of character players.

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“So I look at this team and I say we got obviously more skill than that Vegas team had. But we just play one game at a time. Take it one game at a time. We’ve had five elimination games so far and the guys just go into those games playing the same way. They compete hard, they battle hard and they want to keep going.

“I compare the teams a little bit but they’re definitely different types of teams. We’re a lot younger team now. More skilled team than the Vegas team, but the Vegas team was a special team. It had veteran players, character guys and they found a way to win.

“Unfortunately, we fell a little short but it was a great experience for me to get that far in the playoffs as a coach.”

With both the 2018 Golden Knights and the 2022 Rangers, the veteran coach has learned what it’s like to be at the helm of a team that’s surprising the masses. There’s an interesting dynamic to being in that position. From fielding questions about why his team deserves to be where it is to how he’s going to pull this off, Gallant has been here before.

Empowering his players and allowing them to play their own game is Gallant’s recipe for success. The Golden Knights found that out quickly, and the Rangers have, too.

“When we clinched a playoff spot two or three weeks before the season [ended], that was a big goal of ours, obviously,” Gallant said after the team arrived home Tuesday. “And when the playoffs did start, there were 16 teams that I thought — I looked at the Eastern Conference first, obviously, and I said, ‘Any one of these teams can win.’ There’s eight really good teams. They’re talented teams. And you guys asked me many times, ‘Who would you prefer to play?’ And I was honest in my answer: ‘It doesn’t really matter who you play, because there’s eight great teams there.’

“I think any team’s capable of beating anybody at this point in time and that’s what I see with the remaining four teams. They’re all real good hockey teams. I felt like that in the first day of the playoffs.”