21 And Counting

In the end, the team that was built with one goal in mind - to win the Stanley Cup - not only failed in its mission, it didn't even manage to get back to the finals. The Presidents' Trophy Rangers were blanked on their home ice for the second game in a row. The team that hadn't lost a game 7 in its building since, well, forever, was thoroughly drubbed by a Tampa Bay Lightning team that only three days earlier had been lit up for seven goals. Like that great T.S. Eliot poem, they didn't go out with a bang but with a whimper.

Consider this: the Rangers scored more goals in the 3rd period of game 6 in Tampa (five) than they scored in all four games at the Garden combined (four). They were so inept in their building they made the Lightning players look like Bob Gainey clones. For those of you too young to remember, Bob Gainey was arguably the greatest defensive forward to ever play the game. He was to hockey what Bill Russell was to basketball.

So how did this Jekyll / Hyde of a series turn out to be the nightmare of all nightmares for the Rangers? Well, first off, it wasn't just this series. The Blueshirts had been flirting with disaster ever since the playoffs began. Let's not forget that they were 1:41 away from going down in five to the Capitals. Face it, if Braden Holtby doesn't whiff on Chris Kreider's shot, they never make it into overtime and instead of talking about their disappointing exit in the conference finals, we're talking about the great upset in the second round. And even the five games it took them to dispatch the Penguins - easily the weakest team in the playoffs - were all close games. The last two wins, both in overtime, could easily have gone the other way.

Funny, for a team that racked up a franchise-record 53 wins, they never once dominated in any of their postseason contests. Even in the three games where they managed to get their offense going - game 6 against the Caps and games 4 and 6 against the Lightning - they were badly outplayed for huge stretches by their opponent. In each game, their world-class goaltender, Henrik Lundqvist, either held onto to a lead his team seemed determined to hand back or gave his team the chance it needed to regain its footing and surge ahead. To say he was the team's best player would be an understatement.

Even last night, Lundqvist did his best to give his team a chance to win. He stood on his head for two periods, making save after save. He robbed Tyler Johnson point blank just outside his crease. The save was eerily similar to the one he made on Steven Stamkos in game 6. However in that game, seconds after the King made his heroic stop, his team responded by scoring a goal. Last night, there was no heroics by the men in blue. This time, there was no last-minute goal to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. Even their world-class goalie looked mortal in that all-decisive 3rd period.

So now that this season is over, what do the Rangers do next? To be sure, Glen Sather has some decisions to make. While the core of this team is certainly good, it was obvious from the opening drop of the puck, it had some glaring weaknesses. I addressed some of them when the playoff began. To be sure, those roosters came home to crow in the conference finals.

For starters, I'm fairly certain Marty St. Louis has played his last game as a Ranger, perhaps even the NHL. He looked every second of his 39 years in this tournament. Expect Sather to utilize his $5 million salary elsewhere. The Rangers have some cap issues, thanks to the trade for Keith Yandle, and even with the league expected to increase its salary cap by $4 million, Sather will have to use all his skills to tweak this team so it can go the distance in the postseason.

Here's what I would do if I were the G.M. I would definitely sign Derek Stepan, but I would not offer Carl Hagelin a contract. If he files for arbitration and he wins, I would trade him. He did absolutely nothing after the Pittsburgh series. If anything, the style with which he plays is the reason the Rangers are playing golf right now instead of getting ready to play for the Cup. Instead of a flashy skater, I'd try to pry away a punishing winger who can park his ass in front of the opposing goalie's net and score a few goals. The Ranges don't have a single forward outside of Kreider who is capable of doing this. In fact, so inept were they, Alain Vigneault was forced to use defenseman Dan Boyle up front on the power play several times in this series.

Then I'd address the face-off issue that plagued this team throughout most of the season. It was nothing short of an embarrassment that their number one face-off man happened to be their number four center. Every other team in the final four all had centers with impressive face off stats. I would make every effort to get a center who can win a face off AND score. I like Dominick Moore, but if he is your go-to guy to win a face-off in a crucial spot in a game, you're screwed.  Either way, you're not going very far in the playoffs. Period!

Think about it. A first line consisting of Derrick Brassard, centering Rick Nash on the left and a healthy Mats Zucharello on the right, followed by a line of, say, Antoine Vermette centering Derek Stepan on the right and Chris Kreider on the left. The Blackhawks have even more cap issues than the Rangers, so it is unlikely they will be able to resign Vermette in the off season. If Sather is creative, he can have a formidable 1-2 punch upfront. Stephan moving to wing makes perfect sense. The way he positions himself in the offensive zone, he looks more like a winger than a center anyway. If Sather can't address the center issue via free agency, maybe Kevin Hayes could be part of a package to land one.

That would leave J.T. Miller centering Jesper Faust and James Shepard on the third line, with Dominic Moore centering a yet to be determined fourth line. A little too lean for your tastes? Consider that the Lightning got all but two of their goals in this series from their top two lines. Depth only means something if your top gunners come through. In this series, the Lightning's top gunners ran rings around the Rangers top gunners. It wasn't even close. Take away the five point night Brassard had in game 6 and it was a joke.

And then there's the coach. Alain Vigneault was the polar opposite of his predecessor. He treated his players like men with respect and dignity, unlike John Tortorella, who acted like a dickhead most of the time and drove his players like a drill sergeant. When he was fired, you could hear the entire Rangers' locker room exhale.

But Vigneault has two glaring weaknesses that unfortunately came back to bite this team. The first is he is stubborn to a fault. Not once in this year's playoff, or last year's for that matter, did he make any adjustments to his system.  It was clear that every team that played them knew what to expect. The Capitals pounded and pounded the Rangers and kept them primarily to the perimeter of the ice, limiting their scoring chances. The Lightning applied the same strategy, but unlike the Caps, had the talent to make it work. The result was that the Rangers, after winning the first game 2-1, never won another close game in the series. Credit their coach, John Cooper, for having the smarts to switch gears and convince his team to change their style from offense first to defense first. He definitely outcoached Vigneault in this series.

The second weakness is almost as bad. For all his professional demeanor, Vigneault is simply too loyal to his players. They rarely, if ever, were benched for their failures. Yes, they might miss a shift or two for a blown assignment, but they could always count on their coach having their back.  When it was painfully apparent that St. Louis had nothing in the gas tank, Vigneault still put him out on the power play. Compare and contrast him to Joel Quenneville, the Chicago Blackhawks coach, who pulled his goaltender when he gave up questionable goals in the Nashville series and even benched the player his GM traded a number one draft pick to obtain. In Quenneville's world, it's pretty simple: play well and get ice time, struggle and you ride the bench.

Sather must get his coach to be more amenable and less tolerant. If it was fair to criticize Tortorella for his shortcomings, then it's only fitting to hold Vigneault accountable for his. Systems and loyalty are all fine and dandy, but when that system isn't working or your players aren't measuring up, changes must be made. Throughout this whole season there were two constants: the Rangers were as predictable as dirt and, for the most part, they had carte blanche. If this isn't corrected, expect another disappointing postseason next year.

The good news is that, with a little tweaking, the Rangers have the horses to compete for the Stanley Cup next year; the bad news is that their window of opportunity is rapidly closing. Lundqvist is 33. Billy Smith, the great Islander goaltender, won the last of his four Cups when he was 33. The sands of time are running out on the King. He has maybe two or three years left in his prime. If the Rangers don't win the Cup by then, this team, which as played more playoff games than any other team over the last four years, will have to start over and rebuild.

And for the millions of Rangers' fans who have waited patiently since 1994 for another championship, it won't just be 21 years and counting; it might well be a decade or more.

Ironic, isn't it? When Sam Rosen said that '94 championship would last a lifetime, who knew he was being prophetic?

The Stars Come Out To Play

If the Rangers go on to win the Stanley Cup this year, they may well look back at game 4 as the turning point. Down 2 games to 1, the Blueshirts had been thoroughly outplayed in this series. Worse, their star players - Henrik Lundqvist, Rick Nash and Marty St. Louis - were simply abysmal.

Well if there is such a thing as redemption in sports, all three players had it in droves. Lundqvist stopped 38 of 39 shots - 18 of them coming in the second period alone - Nash had 3 points, including 2 goals, and St. Louis scored his first goal of the playoffs on the power play that ostensibly iced the game for his team.

And as the Rangers top two wingers and all-world goaltender were rising to the occasion, their much-maligned defense, which looked more like Swiss cheese the last 2 games, shut down the Lightning's vaunted Triplets line. Keith Yandle, who Glen Sather mortgaged his team's future to obtain at the trade deadline, scored a goal and had 2 assists, and played arguably his best game of the postseason.

Funny how things can turn on a dime. 48 hours ago, the Rangers were on the verge of being run out of the playoffs on a rail; now they have turned this series into a best 2 out of 3, with 2 of those games at Madison Square Garden. They have the momentum AND home ice. If they win game 5 at home, they'll be in the driver's seat.

But as tempting as it might be for the Rangers to celebrate this win, there is still much for them to improve upon. Yes, they checked much better in this game; their center ice play in particular was noticeably improved from game 3. But they still committed too many turnovers and continued to take silly penalties which allowed the Lightning to dominate play throughout much of the second period. Make no mistake about it, without Lundqvist in net, Tampa might well have lit up the Rangers for the third game in a row.

For now, though, the Rangers and their fans can exhale. They aren't out of the woods just yet, but at least they can see the clearing ahead.

Houston We Have A Problem

Be careful what you ask for, you just might get it. During the first two rounds of these Stanley Cup playoffs all we heard from the Rangers is they couldn't get their speed game going because of the physical style of play of the Penguins and the Capitals. That, they said, was the reason for their lack of goal scoring. Just wait until we get to play our game and the goals will come, you'll see.

The Tampa Bay Lightning were supposed to be the perfect tonic for what ailed the Blueshirts; a team that, like them, had a good transition game and the ability to create scoring opportunities off the rush. Now we would finally see some goal scoring.

Well three games into this conference final round, the goals have come alright. Unfortunately for the Rangers, most of those goals have come off of Lightning sticks. In just the last two games, the Bolts have lit up Henrik Lundqvist to the tune of 12 goals against. To put it in perspective, that's only one less goal than he had allowed over the previous eight games combined. Do the math. 13 goals in eight games for a 1.63 goals against average vs. 12 goals in two games for a goals against average of 6.00. You don't have to be a mathematician to see where this is going.

Yes, the Rangers have found their speed game; yes, this series is a helluva lot more exciting than either of the last two. Hell, they're even scoring on the power play - four goals in the last two games. But the problem for the Rangers is they find themselves going skate to skate with a team that is putting on a clinic. The Rangers maybe going at warp six, but the Lightning are traveling at warp nine. They have been considerably quicker and far more opportunistic with their scoring chances than the Rangers. Their best forwards have run circles around the Rangers best forwards.

Adding insult to injury, the Rangers have been sloppy and undisciplined in this series. They have taken bad penalties and have had major defensive lapses in their own end. The team that was built around defense first has forgotten how to defend. And their world-class goaltender has been anything but that over the last two games. His whiff on the overtime goal by Nikita Kucherov in game three was as bad as anything I've seen from him since his rookie year in the league. If his play doesn't dramatically improve by game four, this series is going to end very quickly and another year will go by without a Cup.

It's time to admit the obvious. The Rangers, despite all the hoopla about their "speed game," really aren't all that explosive a team. Yes, they were tied for third in the NHL in scoring, but a lot of those goals came early in the year. Throughout a good chunk of their run to the Presidents' Trophy, they won the bulk of their games by scores of 3-2, 2-1 and 1-0. They might not like low-scoring games, but they typically win them. And if the Rangers have any hope of winning this series and extending their postseason, they had better give up this suicide mission they're on and return to their roots.

If they don't, the Lightning will run over them like a freight train.

Stanley Cup Conference Finals Predictions

Only four teams are left standing. Two weeks from now, it will be two. This weekend, the Eastern and Western conference finals begin. In the East, the Rangers face-off against the Tampa Bay Lightning. In the West, the Anaheim Mighty Ducks and Chicago Blackhawks duke it out. Which two teams will prevail and why?

Well, at the risk of sounding my own horn, two of the teams I picked before the playoffs began - the Rangers and Blackhawks - are still standing. Why? Simple, both teams have the best goaltending in the tournament. That's also the reason I'm picking them to move on to the finals.

Eastern Conference Finals: Rangers vs. Lightning.

The Lightning are loaded upfront. What makes them scary is that their best forward - Steven Stamkos - isn't even on their best line. They're young, fast and explosive and they will give the Rangers all they can handle. And, no doubt, Ryan Callahan and Brian Boyle will be out to prove that Glen Sather made a mistake by letting them go.

But while they may be front loaded, the Blueshirts are still a deeper team, even without Mats Zuccarello. And then there's the defensive pairings and goaltending which heavily favor New York. Henrik Lundqvist hasn't had a bad game in the playoffs, while his counterpart - Ben Bishop - has been lit up twice. He's good, but hardly world class. In what will likely be a low-scoring and tight-checking series, the Rangers should be favored, even if only slightly.

The Lightning went 3-0 against the Rangers this season, but those games were played early in the season before New York went on their Presidents' Trophy run. They're a much different and better team now.

Prediction: Rangers in seven.

Western Conference Finals: Ducks vs. Blackhawks.

Okay, I admit it. I didn't think the Ducks were this good. In fact, I had them bowing out in the second round. But while Anaheim has managed to go 8-1 this postseason, they've done so against two pretty mediocre teams. Chicago is anything but mediocre. In fact, they're arguably the best team in the tournament.

The Ducks have the two best centers in the playoffs and can skate with anyone. But I've watched them and their Achilles heal is clearly in goal, where Frederik Andersen has been erratic and VERY beatable. If Corey Crawford lives up to his billing, this series could get out of hand quickly.

Prediction: Blackhawks in six. 

7th Heaven

Okay, they did it. They came back from the dead.  They came ALL the way back. Trailing 3-1 in the series and trailing 1-0 with less than two minutes to go in game 5, the Rangers found a way to pull it out and force a game 6 and then a game 7.

They kept fighting and fighting and just wouldn't go away. Consider this, at no point in this series did the Rangers lead in games until the very end. They even trailed in game 7, thanks to a poor start and a goal by Mark Messier wannabe Alex Ovechkin. But they came back and willed their way to an overtime win - their 10 straight at home in an elimination game - and in so doing, became the first team in NHL history to win a series after training 3-1 in two consecutive years.

As for the Caps, they lost for the 5th time after holding a 3-1 series lead. No doubt they will spend the offseason pondering what went wrong. They were just 1:41 away from advancing to their first conference final since 1997. But they just couldn't put that final nail in the Rangers' coffin. This one will hurt a long time.

So how did the Rangers pull it off? How did they manage to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat? Karma? Destiny? Resilience? Talent? Luck? How about all of the above?

Let's face it, they hardly played like the team that won the Presidents' Trophy. They were sporadic at best and never quite got their speed game going. Part of that was due to an excellent game plan by Capitals' coach Barry Trotz. The rest? Well, as I mentioned in two earlier pieces, this Rangers' team, while good, never dominated their opponents the way you'd expect a Cup contender to. Of their 53 wins, only 18 were decided by more than two goals. Only the Anaheim Ducks faired worse among playoff teams.

Winning the majority of your games by one or two goals may seem like the perfect strategy for a long playoff run, but it's also playing with fire. Many of those regular season games might just as easily have gone the other way. Consider this: each of the Rangers four overtime wins could've been losses, in which case they'd be playing golf now instead of preparing to host the Tampa Bay Lightning Saturday. How's that for luck?

But I'd be doing them a huge disservice if I didn't acknowledge that for all their fortuitousness, this bunch of Rangers has a boat-load of character. They've shown it all season long. Some how, some way, they manage to win games lesser teams would've lost. This may not be the most talented group of players to don the Rangers' logo, but they are the most resilient I've seen since - dare I say it? - 1994. To paraphrase a line from the Godfather 3, Just when you thought they were out, they pull themselves back in.

But while they are resilient, they are hardly cocky. Unlike the Caps, who shot their mouths off after losing game 6, the Rangers kept a low profile and concentrated on the game at hand. This singular focus, I believe, is the reason they never panicked once throughout this series. Even when the Caps were surging late in game 6 and early in the overtime in game 7, they kept their composure.  They bent, but they never broke.

And now they have reached the conference finals for the second season in a row. They are eight victories away from winning their first Stanley Cup in 21 years. Only Tampa and either the Ducks or Chicago Blackhawks stand in their way. The series against the Lightning should be a breath of fresh air for a team that was bounced around like a basketball by Washington. Both teams ostensibly employ the same system: an uptempo speed game. The Lightning are more front loaded than the Rangers, but the Blueshirts are deeper and have a huge edge in goal. Funny, I remember saying that about the Caps and look what almost happened.

The Rangers are halfway home; halfway towards realizing the goal they set for themselves the night they lost in overtime to the L.A. Kings in game 5 of the Finals last June. They're talented, determined, resilient, focused and, yes, lucky. But then find me a championship team that didn't have a little bit of luck going for it? Maybe this time destiny will shine on them. Maybe this time they get to be the bride instead of the bride's maid.

This much I can tell you: if they're in overtime in game 7 of the Finals, I wouldn't bet against them.

A Stay of Execution?

I'll admit it. I thought it was over. Admit it. You thought it was over too.

After Curtis Glencross converted his own rebound past Henrik Lundqvist with 9:06 remaining to give the Caps a 1 nothing lead, the Blueshirts were looking like toast.

The Presidents Trophy winners were less than ten minutes away from bowing out in the second round of the playoffs with their skates between their legs.

And then...

With less than two minutes remaining in their season, Derek Stepan, who had his best game of the playoffs - perhaps the whole damn season - gained the Caps zone, pulled up and fed a perfect pass to Chris Kreider who one-timed a shot passed Braden Holtby, who is having the series of his life.

And just like that, tie game. The Garden erupted with joy as the Rangers forced overtime. And in the extra session, it was Stepan to the rescue again, setting up the winning goal by Ryan McDonagh off a feed from Jesper Fast.

Game over. Rangers win. They live to fight another day.

In a game which saw the Blueshirts dictate the pace early and pepper Holtby with 11 of the game's first 13 shots, it was poetic justice that the two goals they managed to score were the result of deflections. Pretty? No. Effective? Yes.

Now the scene shifts back to Washington where the Caps will be under pressure to close out the series or face a game seven at the Garden, where the Rangers are now a perfect 9 and 0 in elimination games. In their history the Capitals have blown 3-1 series leads four times. That burden will be weighing heavily on them Sunday. Talk about a turn of events. The Caps were this close to moving on. Now they've given their opponents something they haven't had since game two of this series: momentum. 

The odds are still against the Rangers prevailing. Despite the emotional win, they are hardly out of the woods. Let's not forget they were 1:41 away from being shutout for the second time in three games. For all their resilience, they're still way too cute with the puck. Several times last night, they found themselves in ideal scoring situations and elected to pass rather than shoot. Kreider, who scored the tying goal, looked like Mother Teresa with the puck. I got it, no you take it. They won game five, but if they plan on winning games six and seven, they're going to have to bury the few opportunities they are afforded.

For now, though, they're alive. There WILL be a game six Sunday night. The season continues. Maybe the hockey gods will smile on them and they will go on to win the Cup, or maybe last night was just a temporary stay of execution. 

We'll know soon enough.

Do or Die for Rangers?

Going into Wednesday's game-four match with the Capitals, the prevailing sentiment among some hockey experts is that while it is important for the Rangers to tie the series, it is not, as of yet, a life or death situation. The Rangers, they argue, are the league's best team and have shown their resilience throughout the season many times. If any team can come back from a 3-1 series deficit, it is certainly them. After all, they came back from a 3-1 deficit against the Penguins last year and Pittsburgh that year was a considerably better team than this year's Washington team.  While such thinking is laudable, it is dangerous and I'll explain why.

Yes, the Rangers came back from a 3-1 deficit last year against the Penguins, but, contrary to the above statement, Pittsburgh was a flawed and vulnerable team that year. After winning the first game, the Blueshirts lost a tough game two in Pittsburgh, then returned home and stunk out the Garden in games three and four. Once they had regained their footing following the death of Marty St. Louis' mother, the Rangers ran off three straight wins en route to an improbable finals appearance.

This year's Capitals team is a much more complete team, both offensively and defensively, than last year's Penguins team. While they don't have the speed of the Rangers, they have done an outstanding job of taking away the middle of the ice, forcing the Blueshirts to the outside. Unlike last year's Rangers team that turned on the jets in game five, this year's team has played only one really poor period of hockey in the entire tournament. Every game has been highly contested and decided by one goal. The Rangers aren't in a 2-1 hole because of the way they've played, so much as the way their opponent has played. Expecting another come from behind miracle is wishful thinking to say the least.

And then there is the nagging question: Is this year's Rangers' team really better than last year's. On paper and certainly in the win/loss column, the answer appears to be yes. But a careful look at how they've played this season reveals something quite interesting. The Rangers won an inordinate amount of their games by one goal. One could make the argument that they've been in playoff mode for most of the season. While that certainly can strengthen a team and force them to be more focused, it can also be quite draining both physically and emotionally. Having to stave off elimination three consecutive times would be a daunting task for any team, especially one as driven and extended as this year's Rangers team.

And finally, while 27 teams have come back from 3-1 deficits to win their series, only six of them went on to win the Stanley Cup. More alarming is the fact that only eight organizations have come from behind more than once, with Vancouver accomplishing the feat three times.  Prior to last season's comeback, the Rangers had never managed it once. It's worth noting they fell to the Kings in the finals that year. If you're a betting man, you can't like the odds of a successful championship run in such a scenario.

If I'm the Rangers, I treat tomorrow's match like it's game seven. I'd pull out all the stops, crash the net and throw all caution to the wind. They must win by hook or crook. They can't head back to the Garden trailing 3-1, not if they plan on hoisting the Cup in June.

Maybe I'm overreacting. Maybe they go down 3-1, come back and go all the way. They did win the Presidents' trophy, after all. And they're playing a team that has made it past the second round of the playoffs only twice in its entire history and has on four occasions blown 3-1 series leads. But if they plan on winning this series and prevailing in the next two, they're going to have to step it up and want it more. This year's playoff teams, as I pointed out in an earlier piece, are considerably better than last year's teams. Several of those teams have a legitimate chance of going all the way.

The Capitals are one of them.