Adam Henrique's overtime goal lifted the New Jersey Devils to a 3-2 victory over the New York Rangers and into the NHL Stanley Cup Final.
The victory gave the Devils a 4-2 triumph over the top-seeded Rangers in the best-of-seven Eastern Conference finals.
The Devils will face the Western Conference champion Los Angeles Kings for the NHL crown, with the best-of-seven championship series starting on Wednesday in Newark.
The sixth-seeded Devils, who won the last of their three NHL championships in 2003, had seized a 3-2 lead in the series with victories in games four and five.
Henrique secured the decisive victory when he scored 63 seconds into overtime.
Henrique knocked in a loose puck that ended up in the crease with Rangers goalie Henrik Lundqvist on his belly in a scramble.
"That one was like Christmas. ... I'll take it," Henrique said.
With Lundqvist unable to get to the puck, his defensemen also failed.
"I blocked it, I don't know where it went from there," Ryan McDonagh said. "It's a scramble. You just hope it gets cleared or a whistle or something. I didn't even see it go in."
Rangers captain Ryan Callahan called it "the worst feeling you can feel -- especially an overtime loss like that".
"Just like that your season's over," Callahan said. "We fight hard all year, we fight back in this game, showed a lot of character. It's tough, it's a hard way to end it."
Devils goalie Martin Brodeur, 40, made 33 saves, including eight in a third period dominated by New York.
The victory came 18 years after Brodeur and the Devils missed a chance to close out the Rangers in the Eastern Conference finals, eventually losing the series.
Ryan Carter and Ilya Kovalchuk scored for the Devils in the first period.
The Rangers tied it in the second period with goals from Ruslan Fedotenko and Callahan.
The Devils won titles in 1995 over Detroit, 2000 over Dallas and 2003 over Anaheim and lost in the 2001 Final to Colorado.
"For the Devils organization to be back where we belong, it's a great feeling," right wing David Clarkson said.
However, this fifth trip to the finals could be the least likely in club history.
The Devils missed the playoffs last season for the first time since 1996. They bounced back with a 102-point regular season but were just the sixth seeds in the Eastern Conference.
They needed double overtime in game seven to beat Florida in the first round -- when Henrique also got the series-clinching goal.