NHL Playoff Preview (Round Three)

And then there were four.

The conference finals are set to begin this week, and for the second time in three years the Rangers find themselves on the verge of a finals appearance, having dispatched the analytics darlings of the hockey world: the Carolina Hurricanes.

I went four for four in the last round, which brings my playoff record up to an outstanding 11-1. My lone blemish was the Winnipeg Jets. I still can't get over just how badly they were beaten by the Colorado Avalanche. 

Unlike last season, there are no surprises here. No wildcards that got hot late and made a run. All four of these conference finalists are legit Stanley Cup contenders, meaning any one of them could find themselves hoisting that chalice in June. And that makes this the most unpredictable third round in years.

Like the last round, I'll start with the East and end with the West.

Eastern Conference:

New York vs. Florida: The last time these two franchises met in the postseason was 1997. It would be the last hurrah for Messier, Gretzky, Tikkanen, Leetch and Richter, and also the last time the Blueshirts would make the playoffs until 2006.

Both these teams avoided long, drawn-out series in their first two rounds. The Rangers swept the Washington Capitals and beat the Hurricanes in six, while the Panthers needed only five games to defeat the Tampa Bay Lightning and six games to send the Boston Bruins packing. That means that both teams will have plenty in the gas tank this round. And they will need it.

It's no secret that the Rangers rely on their special teams and elite goaltending. Against the Canes, New York went 5-18 on the power play and scored two short handed goals, while Carolina went 2-21. Overall in the playoffs, the Rangers power play is operating at 31.4 percent, while their penalty kill is at 89.5 percent. Both are second best among active playoff teams. The Panthers power play isn't quite as impressive, coming in at 22.0 percent. However, their penalty kill is a formidable 86.1 percent.

Both teams have elite forwards in their top six, led by Artemi Panarin for the Rangers and Sam Reinhart for the Panthers, and depth throughout the lineup, though Florida's third line is slightly better than New York's. Both teams have solid defensive pairings, though the Panthers D is slightly bigger and more physical, Jacob Trouba notwithstanding. The key for the Rangers will be Adam Fox. The former Norris Trophy winner has only four assists in the playoffs. He needs to step it up in this series.

As in the last round, goaltending will be crucial for New York. Igor Shesterkin outperformed Freddie Andersen, who as it turned out, didn't quite live up to his billing. The Rangers net minder has a 2.40 goals against average and a .923 save percentage in ten games. His opponent, Sergei Bobrovsky, has a 2.37 goals against average and a .902 save percentage in eleven games.

Unlike the Hurricanes, the Panthers just don't throw a ton of shots at the net in an attempt to create "chaos." They excel at driving to the net and creating high-danger scoring chances. It is imperative that the Rangers stay disciplined with their puck management and do their best to keep the area in front of their net as clear as possible. The more pucks Igor sees, the more saves he will be able to make. The Panthers led the league during the regular season in being penalized, mostly due to their physical style of play. If that trend continues in this series, the Rangers must make them pay.

Interesting tidbit: Paul Maurice and Peter Laviolette share something in common. They both coached the Hurricanes. Maurice was replaced by Laviolette in '04. Then in '08, Laviolette was replaced by Maurice. Both men left notes for each other.

Last year, the Panthers made it all the way to the Stanley Cup Finals before losing to the Vegas Golden Knights. The Rangers, after advancing to the Eastern Conference Finals the year before, were eliminated in the first round by the New Jersey Devils. Both teams have something to prove to themselves and to their respective fan bases. This should be one helluva series. Rangers in seven.

Western Conference:

Dallas vs. Edmonton: Last season, the Stars lost to the Golden Knights in the Western Conference Finals. This season, they knocked off Vegas in the first round and now find themselves up against the NHL's perennial bridesmaids. The Oilers, led by Connor McDavid, have been knocking on Lord Stanley's door for the last four years but have never made it passed the conference finals. This season under Kris Knoblauch, they've learned how to take care of their own end. The result is an offense that can still light up the sky combined with a defense that can shut down opponents.

The Stars have the edge in depth - they can roll four lines - and in goal. But the Oilers have the edge on special teams where their 37.5 percent power play will wreak havoc on a Stars penalty kill unit that is a woeful 69.2 percent. It should be noted that the Colorado Avalanche also had a very potent power play - 36.7 percent - yet still lost to the Stars.

Two years ago, I picked the Oilers over the Avs in six. So what happened? The Avs swept the Oilers. This time around, I'm going with the better all-around team. Stars in six.

Just in case the Rangers don't advance, this is my prediction for the Stanley Cup Finals: 

Panthers over the Stars 4-3. 

Conn-Smythe Trophy: Matthew Tkachuk 

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.

Close It Out

This has been a very strange and difficult to figure conference final series between the Rangers and Canadiens.

You could easily say that were it not for the outstanding goaltending of Montreal's Dustin Tokarski, this series would've ended last night with a four-game sweep. How bad have the Habs been in this series? By my count they've played three solid periods of hockey in four games. They've been slow and sloppy and their number one offensive player, P.K. Subban, has been, well, offesive.  Last night's power-goal was the first point he's had in the entire series.

Of course, the Rangers haven't been that much better. With the exception of game one's rout, they've been their own worst enemy. Yes, they've been the better team, but let's face it, that's not saying much. Consider this: if the Canadiens had managed to score just one more power play goal last night, as strange as it might seem, this series would actually be tied with the Blueshirts going back to Montreal and their backs against the wall.

Funny game, hockey. A bounce here, a bounce there. Last night's game was about as sloppy as you could get. The Rangers had to kill off eight penalties, five of them committed in the offensive zone. As a result, they never got their forecheck or speed game going. And yet they still managed to score three goals, all of them off of defensive lapses on the part of the Canadiens; the last one coming in overtime from Marty St. Louis, who took a brilliant pass from Carl Hagelin and went top shelf on Tokarski. With all the talk about the goaltenders in this series, Hagelin has been, by far, the best player on either side.

And now the Rangers find themselves in a rather unusual and unfamiliar position. They are up three games to one. They have three chances to close out their opponent. They haven't been this fortunate since they swept the Atlanta Thrashers in '07. So what will they do?

If I'm the Rangers, I close this sucker out Tuesday night. I would not look a gift horse in the mouth. There is no guarantee that the Rangers would win a game six at home. And, should they lose game six, it's over. No way they win a game seven in Montreal. Ask the Penguins what happened to them after they blew a chance to close out the Rangers in five. You can bet the ranch Montreal has the tape of that game.

The Canadiens will throw the kitchen sink at the Rangers. They've done their best to goat the Blueshirts into scrums designed only to incite and distract them. Brandon Prust's late hit on Derek Stepan, which resulted in the latter sustaining a broken jaw, shows the lengths to which they will go to get the Rangers off their game.

It will be up to head coach Alain Vigneault to keep his cool and convince his team not to lose theirs. Vigneault has been nothing short of brilliant in these playoffs. After four plus years of enduring the ranting and raving of John Tortorella, Vigneault has been a breath of fresh air in the locker room. Compare and contrast him with his counterpart, Montreal coach Michel Therrien, whose "small world" comment concerning Derick Brassard's upper-body injury, was about as unprofessional and amateurish at it gets. Credit Vigneault for not biting on that poisoned apple.

Tuesday night, the Rangers have three objectives: resist the urge to retaliate when the Canadiens come after them; stay out of the penalty box; and throw as many pucks as they can at Tokarski. If they do that, they stand an excellent chance of getting some badly needed rest in preparation for a Stanley Cup final round against either the L.A. Kings or the Chicago Blackhawks.  If they don't, they could end up being only the third team in the last sixty-eight to blow a 3-1 conference final round lead.

It's been twenty years since the last championship. This might be the best chance a Rangers team has of drinking from the Cup for quite some time. It would be nothing short of catastrophic if they let it slip by.