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.