The New York Ranger rarely trailed the Ottawa Senators in the first five games of their best-of-seven series. 

They did, however, blow two third-period leads - in Games 2 and 5 - and lose both those games in overtime. 

Entering Tuesday's Game 6, the Rangers had trailed the Senators for just 13:10 through five games - or 327:12 of game time including overtime - yet they were down 3-2 in the series.

In Game 6, the Senators grabbed the lead just under five minutes in on a goal by Mike Hoffman and never relinquished it, winning by a final score of 4-2 to advance on an identical series score.

With the Rangers coming so close to winning two games, holding one-goal leads with 1:30 to play in both Games 2 and 5, the team blamed themselves for failing to advance to the Eastern Conference Final.

"I think we kind of gave it away," forward Mats Zuccarello told NHL.com after being eliminated.

"We put ourselves in a position to win almost every game. We just didn't get it done," Henrik Lundqvist added. "The last few minutes there in a couple of games, like I said, it hurt us there really bad in the series."

Captain Ryan McDonagh said the team seemed to "shoot ourselves in the foot" when it came to closing out the Senators late in games.

Forward Derek Stepan acknowledged the team's shortcomings in holding leads, but also praised the resiliency of the Senators.

"We had a lot of chances that I think we let slip through our fingers, but it's a good team over there, don't sell 'em short," Stepan said. "They battled real hard. They played real strong games. They had that magic. Sometimes you've got to have a little bit of that."

The Rangers enter the offseason with only two players (Tanner Glass and Brendan Smith) scheduled to hit unrestricted free agency in July. New York does, however, have six restricted free agents to negotiate with, including Mika Zibanejad, who was acquired from the Senators for Derick Brassard before the season.