Rangers Playoffs – Keefe To The City

Aug 2, 2020

Rangers-Hurricanes Game 1 Thoughts: Henrik Lundqvist Still Can’t Score in the Postseason

The Rangers lost Game 1 to the Hurricanes after being thoroughly outplayed. Henrik Lundqvist did all he could, but I’m sure to many it wasn’t enough.

You could take Saturday’s Rangers game and insert it into any of the last 15 Rangers seasons and it would fit seamlessly. A Rangers postseason game in which the team is thoroughly dominated, needs Henrik Lundqvist to stand on his head to have a chance and attemps a comeback a little too late? It was a game straight out of the Rangers’ post-lockout era, and unfortunately, it came against a team they have grown accustomed to beating, and a team they should beat.

In the first minute of Game 1 of the Rangers’ Stanley Cup qualifying series against the Hurricanes, Jesper Fast took a big hit from former teammate Brady Skjei. It was a big enough hit that Fast, arguably the Rangers’ best defensive player, was lost on the ice for the remainder of his shift. Most likely concussed from the hit, Fast stayed on the ice long enough to find his way back into the defensive zone where he stayed flat-footed because of his head injury and never thought to watch for or pick up Jacob Slavin joining the forecheck by creating a backdoor lane to the net. A cross-zone pass to Slavin and a perfect shot over Lundqvist’s right shoulder gave the Hurricanes a 1-0 just 61 seconds into the game. Fast never returned.

The game was officiated like a September preseason game in which the league is trying to display how infractions will be called for the upcoming season. And while there hasn’t been hockey in nearly four months and we are much closer to the start of a new season than we normally are to a postseason, calling 16 minor penalities in a playoff game is simply absurd. The entire first two periods were played with special teams and the more penalties the Rangers took, the more Artemi Panarin sat on the bench. And the more he sat on the bench, the more ice time Brett Howden and Greg McKegg received.

Like the regular season, it wasn’t until the Rangers’ chance of winning was approaching impossible that David Quinn began to make line decisions with urgency. It wasn’t until the Rangers trailed by two goals with about two minutes to go in the game that he finally gave in to putting Panarin and Mika Zibanejad on the ice together to kill a penalty and try to create offense. The desperation move from Quinn paid off as the two were able to control the puck in the Hurricanes’ zone and both assist on the Rangers’ second goal from the unlikely stick of Marc Staal.

The Rangers played the way they played for the first half of the regular season, abandoning the style of play that led to them going on the type of run needed to now be part of the 24-team tournament. Their play was chaotic in the first period as they let the Hurricanes dominate possession, and if not for Lundqvist, the game would have been over before the first intermission. Unfortunately, I can see Quinn going to Igor Shesterkin in Game 2 on Sunday, even though Lundqvist earned the right to play and deserves to play the next game after his performance in Game 1. But like the faction of fans who probably think the three goals against were Lundqvist’s fault and he’s the reason the team is already down in the best-of-5 series, Quinn will say the team needs a spark and he’ll go to Shesterkin. It’s illogical and unfair, but it’s the way Quinn makes decisions. The same way he thinks Howden or McKegg are better options than Panarin or Zibanejad at any point in a hockey game.

After going 4-0 against the Hurricanes this season, the Hurricanes finally solved the Rangers. Or at least they finally held on against the Rangers. Game 1 was nearly identical to most of the Rangers-Hurricanes games this season with the Rangers getting thoroughly outplayes. The only difference was the final score. In the regular season, the Rangers were always able to get even better goaltending than they did on Saturday and they were always able to find the net when they needed to. Without Lundqvist somehow playing better than he did, which might not have been humanly possible, and without puck luck, the Rangers experienced the fate they were able to avoid against Carolina earlier this year.

The Rangers need to win Game 2. They don’t have to win Game 2, though if they don’t, their season will be on the brink of elimation. The five-month wait for Rangers hockey can’t only last a few days, but if the Rangers continue to play like they did on Saturday, it will.

Blogs • Contest • Rangers Playoffs

Apr 13, 2016

Stanley Cup Playoffs Challenge

Enter the Keefe To The City Stanley Cup Playoffs Challenge and win a $100 Visa gift card if you come in first place.

The Stanley Cup Playoffs are here and games begin on Wednesday at 7 p.m. with four series opening on the first night.

Enter the Keefe To The City Stanley Cup Playoffs Challenge and win a $100 Visa gift card if you come in first place. It’s free to enter and will keep you busy from now until mid-June when the Rangers hoist the Cup for the first time in 22 years, so fill out a bracket and follow along this spring.

ENTRY DETAILS:
Once you have entered, email your full name and bracket username to keefetothecity@gmail.com.

Click here to sign up.

Group Name: Keefe To The City
Password: kttc2016

EMAIL YOUR FULL NAME AND BRACKET USERNAME to keefetothecity@gmail.com.

Good luck!

Blogs • Rangers • Rangers Playoffs

May 12, 2015

Alex Ovechkin and the Over-the-Top Guarantee

Once upon a time a guarantee meant something. It meant something in the 1993-94 playoffs when Mark Messier told said “We’ll win tonight” in anticipation of Game 6 against the Devils, and it should mean

Once upon a time a guarantee meant something. It meant something in the 1993-94 playoffs when Mark Messier told said “We’ll win tonight” in anticipation of Game 6 against the Devils, and it should mean something that Alex Ovechkin guaranteed a Capitals win over the Rangers in Game 7. But it doesn’t.

“We’re going to play our game and we’re going to come back and we’re going to play Montreal or Tampa.”

That’s what Ovechkin said after the Rangers’ Game 6 win, after the Rangers staved off elimination for the second straight game and after they solved Braden Holtby by scoring four goals, which is something he hadn’t allowed in over a month.

“We almost tie the game and the character of this group, it shows a lot,” Ovechkin said. “We’re going to come back and win the series.”

And there’s the second part of his guarantee.

Ovechkin is the captain of the Capitals and the face of that franchise, so of course he’s going to be optimistic about his team’s chances even if they blew a two-game series lead, blew Game 5 with 1:41 left and lost Game 6 at home. I wouldn’t expect Ovechkin to think anything other than that his team will rebound after back-to-back losses and win Game 7 on the road in Madison Square Garden where the Rangers have never lost a Game 7 in the history of the team. But I said “think” those things, not say them.

In the first part of his guarantee, he says, “We’re going to play our game,” as if the Capitals playing at their best means they will win Game 7. He doesn’t say, “We’re going to play our game and the Rangers are going to play their game and we’re going to come back and we’re going to play Montreal or Tampa,” as he disregards the idea that the Rangers might also play their game, which was eight wins and 12 points better in the 82-game regular season. I guess Ovechkin was trying to say that if the Capitals play their game they won’t lose, but if you look at this series, what exactly is their game?

In Game 1, they won thanks to a last-second play made by possible by a non-boarding call. They lost Game 2. They won Game 3 on a lucky and fortunate bounce off Keith Yandle’s skate. They won Game 4 in an evenly matched game. They blew Game 5 and lost Game 6. From the first six games of this series, it seems like the Capitals’ game is to block shots, lean on Holtby and wait for an Ovechkin goal (that hasn’t happened since Game 2) or score on an incredible bounce. If that’s the “game” Ovechkin is talking about for Game 7, I’m not sure that will be enough to beat Henrik Lundqvist, the Garden and momentum.

“We almost tie the game” is how Ovechkin begins the second part of his guarantee. Since when is “almost” doing something a reason to be Almost coming back after trailing by three goals, but never completing the comeback is an unusual way to support a guarantee. If anything, I would think coming to close to completing a comeback at home and not completing it would be demoralizing knowing that the next game would be a win-or-go-home game on the road, but not to Ovechkin.

Ovechkin had nothing to lose by making this guarantee. If the Capitals win, Washington will consider him their Messier for the time being and if they lose, well, that’s what the Capitals do. They blow leads in the playoffs and lose in the first or second round. The Capitals not making the conference finals would be the same old storyline out of Washington since the last time they reached it in 1997-98.

Ovechkin was already wrong once this series when he told Lundqvist, “All series, baby, all series,” after scoring on him in Game 1. He followed it up with another goal in Game 2, but since then he hasn’t scored. He hasn’t even had an assist. No points in the last four games for the player who promised to continue to provide offense for the Capitals for the entire series. That’s one empty guarantee already this series. Expect another one in Game 7.

Blogs • Rangers • Rangers Playoffs

Apr 21, 2015

Rangers-Penguins Game 3 Thoughts: No Reason to Worry

The Rangers won Game 3 against the Penguins to take a 2-1 series lead and proved there was nothing for Rangers fans to worry about.

See, I told you everything is fine. So the Rangers’ two-goal lead was cut to one with 6:48 left in the game and Rangers fans were forced to sit through 408 agonizing seconds watching the Penguins try to tie the game. It all worked out.

The Rangers’ relentless pressure in the first period of the first two games carried over to Game 3 where they outshot the Penguins 7-3 and held another lead heading into the locker room at the end of the 20. I’m still amazed at Carl Hagelin’s decision to rip a bomb on his first-period breakaway goal, especially with Marc-Andre Fleury coming out so far to challenge him, but hey, he got the result.

The first three games of this series have gone as expected. The Penguins haven’t been able to keep up with the Rangers’ speed. The Rangers’ power play has been below average. The Penguins haven’t been able to win when Sidney Crosby doesn’t score. Evgeni Malkin hasn’t been able to find his offense against the Rangers’ defense. Henrik Lundqvist has been better than Marc-Andre Fleury. And because of all this, the Rangers are winning the series 2-1. And, oh yeah, Chris Kunitz has been his usual scummy self.

There was a lot of unnecessary worrying going on in New York following the Game 2 loss after the Penguins completed any road team’s goal of splitting on the road. The Rangers answered the Penguins’ split with a road win of their own to reclaim home-ice advantage in the series and put the Penguins on the brink of staring down elimination for the rest of the series. The 2-1 Game 3 road win cancelled out the Game 2 home loss and meant all of the uneasiness on Saturday night was for nothing.

Despite Games 1, 2 and 3 all being decided by one goal, and the Rangers having lost one of those games and Game 3 being a pivotal game in the series, I’m still not worried about the Rangers. Maybe it’s because I know that when the Rangers are at their best the Penguins can’t beat them or because Henrik Lundqvist is in net, but there’s no real sense of worrying about this Rangers team until they’re faced with an elimination game and the season is on the line.

I expect the Rangers to win and that has never really been the case with them in the playoffs before. In the Henrik Lundqvist era, the only two playoff series I expected them to win before this season were the first round against Atlanta in 2006-07 and the first round against Philadelphia in 2013-14. Even when they were the 1-seed in the East in 2011-12, I still didn’t feel confident about their chances against 8-seed Ottawa in the first round because I didn’t think that Rangers team was that great, but rather a team that had put together a long list of improbable come-from-behind and last-second wins. This postseason, I expect the Rangers to win and that’s changed the playoff experience.

Past postseasons, especially last year, were about seeing how far the Rangers could go. This one is about how far they need to go and how far they need to go is the Stanley Cup Final and if they continue to play the way they have in three first periods against the Penguins, they will get there.

Blogs • Rangers • Rangers Playoffs

Apr 19, 2015

Rangers-Penguins Game 2 Thoughts: Everything Is Fine

The Rangers lost Game 2 to the Penguins to even the series up, but there’s no reason to panic after losing one game to the best player in the world.

The Rangers aren’t in trouble. They’re not. There seems to be a lot of panic and a lot of worrying going on after a 4-3 Game 2 loss to the Penguins, but that’s just New York being New York. In a city where each baseball game of 162 is reacted to like Game 7 of the World Series, it’s only normal for an overreaction to the result of a playoff game, in any sport.

I picked the Rangers in six because I knew it wasn’t going to be easy to eliminate the Penguins. Even if Game 1 felt as easy as any 2-1 playoff win could ever feel and any Rangers playoff win could ever feel, it wasn’t always going to be like that. The Penguins still have the best player in the world and at times the second-best player in the world. And when you have the best player in the world, sometimes he’s going to play like the best player in the world and score two goals in a game and you’re going to lose.

Mats Zuccarello said, “We knew it wasn’t going to be easy – and it’s still not,” after the Game 2 loss and hopefully his words carried to all the irrational fans out there, who somehow thought the Rangers would walk through the first round and even the second round and the conference finals and find themselves in the Stanley Cup Final because they’re the No. 1 overall seed.

The Penguins limped to the finish line and backed into the playoffs, for a good part of the season they sat atop the Met and looked like they might run away with another division title and another 1- or 2-seed in the playoffs. It doesn’t matter that the Penguins tried to 2007 Mets or 2014-15 Bruins their way out of the postseason and cause more chaos for a front office that was just turned over this past offseason, the same way it doesn’t matter that the Senators finished the season on a 20-3-3 to get in the playoffs since they’re now in a 3-0 series hole to the Canadiens. All that matters is that the Penguins are in the playoffs and they should be taken as seriously by the fans and media as any postseason opponent, especially one with Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin.

The Rangers didn’t look like a Presidents’ Trophy-winning team in Game 2 and when you score three goals in a playoff game with Henrik Lundqvist, you should win. Had you told me before Game 2 that the Rangers would have a 1-0 lead after the first and score three goals in the game, well, I would be broke right now from loading up on the Rangers’ money line and likely the puck line as well since three goals in a playoff with Lundqvist will usually be good enough to cover the -1.5. Unfortunately, what should be a guaranteed formula for success didn’t work out, the Penguins did their job by avoiding a 2-0 deficit and split on the road, which is any road’s teams goal in the playoffs. Now it’s the Rangers’ job to achieve the same goal in Pittsburgh in the next two games.

If the Rangers lose Game 3, they’re still not in trouble. If they lose Games 3 and 4 then we’ll have a situation. For now though, everything is fine. It’s not perfect and it’s not even great. Very rarely in the postseason do you get either of those feelings. Maybe once you reach the Stanley Cup Final and are moments away from winning it all would you say things are perfect are going great. But things are fine right now for the Rangers and that’s all you can ask after the first two games of a seven-game series.