That sounds similar to someone walking into a casino with $250 on him, getting in a ridiculous streak at blackjack, sits at a roulette table up $75,000 only to slowly lose all but ~$150 at which point he returns to the blackjack table,drops another $100 then calls it quits and says, "well, I only lost $200 after ten hours of gambling, that isn't bad".
If they hadn't treated game three as a throwaway game they would have swept the Devils. If they cared at all about defending their zone or taking care of the puck they would have won the series in no more than six games.
After the first two games, winning as easily as they did the bulk of the team acted like they shouldn't be required to work in order to win. In their own zone it appeared that they felt Igor could stop everything and in the Devil's zone there were too few instances where they did more than pass the puck around the perimeter. Too few Rangers (the kids, the fourth line players, Trocheck and about 40% of the time for Zibanijad and Krieder) played like they wanted to win.
What bothers me most is that we could have been a younger, deeper and faster team than the Devils. We were building to that and two summers ago changed direction, threw away a few first and second round picks for rentals and gave away two quality prospects for nothing, primarily to lose this series in seven games.