Panthers head coach Paul Maurice seems to have an anecdote to share about every player he’s coached and coached against, but when it came to his trade-deadline pickup and ex-Ranger Vladimir Tarasenko, the story most worth telling took place during a time when they were on opposing benches in a playoff game.

It was the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs in 2019, when Maurice was the head coach of the Jets and they squared off with Tarasenko and the Blues.

After the visiting team triumphed through each of the first four games, Winnipeg had a 2-0 lead in Game 5.

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What should worry the Rangers after Wednesday night is not just the way they struggled to break down the Panthers’ defense and forecheck all night long.

What should worry them just as much is that Florida coach Paul Maurice did not feel like his team forechecked particularly well on a night when the Rangers got just 23 shots on Sergei Bobrovsky’s net and at one point went 14:23 without one in a 3-0 loss.

“That’s kinda the way we play,” Maurice said. “I thought we were just OK with it, to be honest with you.

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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.

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Sergei Bobrovsky saw 23 shots on Wednesday night, and he stopped every last one of them.

The Panthers netminder accomplished a rarity in the Eastern Conference Final-opening 3-0 win at the Garden, serving the Rangers with their first blanking of the postseason — and only the second since the 2023-24 season began.

The last time the Blueshirts were held goalless was a 4-0 Dec. 9 loss to the rival Capitals.

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Maybe there was some bad mojo left over at the Garden from the Knicks’ Game 7 loss to the Pacers on Sunday.

It’s difficult to determine which of the Rangers’ failed close calls will have kept them up, unable to sleep late into Wednesday and early Thursday morning.

Because there were a few of them, and each was worth lamenting in the wake of their 3-0 loss to the Panthers.

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Rangers legend Mark Messier was already saying the team was playing “too careful” and “too conservative,” and that was before the Blueshirts dropped Game 1 to the Panthers. 

The 3-0 loss surely won’t change his opinion that the Rangers need to put Matt Rempe back in the lineup for Game 2 of the Eastern Conference Final on Friday night back at Madison Square Garden. 

Speaking during the second intermission on ESPN, Messier explained why the Rangers needed to insert the popular bruiser back into the lineup. 

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An unlikely person agreed with the goalie interference call that wiped away a Panthers goal.

Their own coach Paul Maurice.

"I thought it was right, because it's the call I would want on Sergei," Maurice told reporters after Game 1.

The Rangers had a big opportunity that they failed to capitalize on, Peter Laviolette explained after the Game 1 loss.

The Panthers had a goal overturned in the middle of the third period that could have been a catalyst for the Rangers to turn the tide, but the Blueshirts never found a way to make the most of it.