Henrik Lundqvist Calls It a Career

I won't mince words here. Henrik Lundqvist was the greatest Ranger NOT to win a Stanley Cup in the history of the franchise. There, I said it, and the facts bear me out. Jean Ratelle, Vic Hadfield, Rod Gilbert, Brad Park and Ed Giacomin were all a part of the best Rangers team since the days of Lester Patrick, and while all were outstanding players in their own right, none were on the same level as the King.

Lundqvist wasn't just the best player for a Rangers team that flirted with the Cup for several years; he was the best goaltender in the NHL for most of his 15-year playing career. Among his peers, only Carey Price ranks as a close second.

And yet this first ballot Hall of Famer never once drank from the chalice of champions. That's because as great as he was, the team he played on just didn't have that one elite player who could make a difference in a tough, seven-game series. 

In 2014, the year the Rangers went to the Cup finals, they lost to a Los Angeles Kings team that had Anze Kopitar, Jeff Carter and Drew Doughty; the following year when they won the President's Trophy, they were bested in the conference finals by a Tampa Bay Lightning team that had Steven Stamkos, Nikita Kucherov and Victor Hedman. 

A goalie can do many things, but he can't constantly be his team's best player. As brilliant as Andrei Vasilevsky is for the Lightning, he isn't their best player. Neither was Mike Richter back in 1994. He had Mark Messier, Brian Leetch and Adam Graves on that team; poor Hank had Derek Stephan, Rick Nash and Ryan McDonagh. Who would you wanna have playing in front of you?

When I heard that Lundqvist was retiring, my heart was heavy. On the one hand, I will treasure each and every save he made; on the other, I will grieve for what might've been. This mountain of a man might be at peace over his decision to hang up his skates, as Larry Brooks wrote in The New York Post, but for the millions of us who bleed blue, we will never get over the missed opportunities. 

Consider that during the reign of Lundqvist, the Chicago Blackhawks and Pittsburgh Penguins each won three Cups; the LA Kings and Tampa Bay Lightning won two; while the Detroit Red Wings, Carolina Hurricanes, Boston Bruins, Washington Capitals and St. Louis Blues won one a piece. And what did the Rangers accomplish? Two trips to the conference finals and one to the Cup finals, that's what.

Now you know why this moment is so bittersweet. The best goalie of his generation will leave the sport he loved without so much as one lousy ring. He deserved a better fate than the one the organization he called his home for 15 years gave him. True he isn't the only elite player not to win a championship. Dan Marino played 17 seasons for the Miami Dolphins without winning a Super Bowl, so it does happen. Greatness is no guarantee of postseason success. The sports gods can be cruel when they want to be.

But all that's of little consequence to a franchise that since 1940 has won the Cup once. Henrik Lundqvist gave this team a shot at a championship every season he played for them. And for that, all of us should be grateful. I know I am.

So long, Hank. In the words of Bob Hope, thanks for the memories.

Why Shesterkin is the Clear Choice for the Rangers in the Playoffs

By now David Quinn has probably made his decision as to which goaltender he's going to go with against the Carolina Hurricanes in the playoffs, and unless he saw something the rest of us didn't in the exhibition game against the Islanders, I fully expect Igor Shesterkin will start between the pipes Saturday afternoon.

It's the only choice Quinn could make. Yes, Henrik Lundqvist has started every playoff game the Rangers have been in since his arrival in the 2005-06 season. That's quite a streak, but with all due respect to the King, that's not enough to justify starting him in this round.

This team is not the same team it was back when Lundqvist was a perennial Vezina trophy finalist year in and year out. Hell, it's not even the same team it was a year ago when it was in the middle of its rebuilding effort. The fact is this is one of the youngest teams in the NHL, with an average age of just under 26, and that's with a 38 year-old goalie and two defensemen in their early 30s on the roster. After next season, it will be even younger once those contracts are off the books. To take one more stroll down memory lane for old-time sake would do a disservice to all the hard work management has done over the last two seasons.

Look, no one seriously believes this team is good enough to win the Stanley Cup this year. As I wrote in an earlier piece, if they do beat the Hurricanes, they will likely get trounced by whoever they play in the next round. But this will be an important first step for the core of this team that will allow John Davidson and Jeff Gorton to evaluate where they are in the rebuild and to determine what changes will have to be made in order to get them closer to the grail.

Frankly, this is a rather rare moment in Rangers' history. Not since the Emile Francis era has this franchise been in a position to put together a roster that has the capacity of remaining intact for more than a couple of seasons. If you recall, that team's core was together pretty much from 1968-69 thru 1973-74, and had Jean Ratelle not suffered a season-ending injury in '72 playoffs, they might've beaten the Boston Bruins for the Cup.

Since then the franchise has had its moments when it flirted with success ('79) and even caught the bear once ('94), but such moments were rare and always came with a terrible price tag. The '79 team turned out to be a flash in the pan as aging stars like Phil Esposito eventually retired and established veterans like Ulf Nilsson never lived up to expectations. The '94 Cup team was assembled by jettisoning every prospect in the system, which eventually led to a bare cupboard and a dearth of playoff appearances.

Even the most recent "run" - as some have erroneously called it - began and ended with the importing of aging stars like Jaromir Jagr, Brendan Shanahan and Marty St. Louis. Jagr played three seasons for the Blueshirts before going back to Europe, Shanahan retired after two seasons and St. Louis did the same after a year plus. The sum total for all that wheeling and dealing? Two trips to the conference finals, one to the Cup finals and zero championships.

Hopefully, this management team will not make the same mistakes as its predecessors and assemble a team that even with a flat cap can be a legitimate Cup contender and endure the test of time. If Gorton can find a way to maneuver around next year's cap hell that he, himself, inadvertently created by buying out Kevin Shattenkirk - another expensive import that should never have been signed - he's in good shape going forward to lock up his stars for the foreseeable future.

And one of those stars is Shesterkin. That's why, regardless of what happens over the next few days, he needs to start every game. Like the football Giants did when they benched Eli Manning for Daniel Jones last year, the Rangers need to make a commitment to their youngsters so that their youngsters can get the experience they need to win a title.

Maybe if Lundqvist had played with Artemi Panarin and Mika Zibanejad in his prime instead of Rick Nash and Derek Stepan, he might've won that Cup final in 2014. It certainly didn't hurt Mike Richter any having Mark Messier and Brian Leetch for teammates on that '94 team. Great goaltenders can only accomplish so much on their own. They need foot soldiers in front of them to carry the load.

I feel bad for Lundqvist, I really do. He deserved a better fate than this. When he retires he'll be the best goaltender of all time not to win a Cup. And that's unfortunate. But unfortunate or not, that's no excuse for the Rangers to throw good money after bad.

It's Shesterkin's time. This is his team. The future belongs to the young. And the future is now.

Rangers Pony Up To Keep Stepan

In the end, the Rangers didn't have any other choice. They couldn't afford to let their number one center go to arbitration only to save, what, a couple hundred thousand dollars. So they bit down hard, went all in and signed Derek Stepan to a six-year deal worth $39 million. That's $6.5 million per year. The deal also comes with a no-movement clause, which means, barring Stepan taking an oozie into the Garden and airing the joint out, he's not going anywhere.

Of course the key question begging to be answered is this: Is Stepan worth the money? The answer is yes and no. Yes, because, with the exception of Derick Brassard, there was no one else on the roster capable of putting up the numbers Stepan did last year and pretty much has for his entire tenure with the Blueshirts. Face it, with Marty St. Louis retiring after last year's aborted playoff run, goals are going to be a premium this coming season. Kevin Hayes, Jesper Fast and J.T. Miller may turn out to be excellent scorers, or they could be busts, or something in between. No one knows for sure. Losing Stepan or, worse, having an unhappy Stepan would have been disastrous, especially given that the window for this team is at best two years.

No, because he isn't really a number one center not in the strictest sense of what a number one center means. He's not as valuable as Jonathan Toews, who just signed his own multi-year contract with the Blackhawks for the same amount of money. Seriously, who would you rather have as your number one, Stepan or Toews? The fact is when you compare Derek Stepan to other contending teams' top centers, he comes up short. Good, yes; great, no.

Over his relatively brief career with the Rangers, Stepan has been a reliable scorer. But his two biggest handicaps are his lack of size and his inability to win face-offs; the latter proving far more costly, especially for a team that thrives on puck possession the way the Rangers do. It was nothing short of embarrassing that the number one face-off man was the number four center, Dominic Moore.

Indeed that is one glaring weakness which new General Manager Jeff Gorton failed to address. Sadly, the Rangers will enter this coming campaign a weaker team than they were when they were unceremoniously booted from last year's playoffs. Why? Because Gorton only has $500 thousand of cap space left to his disposal. And, mind you, that was after he was forced to dump Carl Hagelin's contract in exchange for Emerson Etem's.

Realistically, the Rangers are going to have a hard time coming close to matching what they did last year. They are no-where near as deep as they were two years ago when they went to the finals and it is hard to see them winning the division with this squad, much less the Presidents' Trophy or Stanley Cup championship. They still have an imposing defense corps, but they could use some help up front. If Gorton could dangle one of his prized defensemen - say, Dan Girardi or Kevin Klein - for a proven goal scorer with some grit, that could mean the difference between an early playoff exit or a deep playoff run.

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?

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.