Rangers – Page 25 – Keefe To The City

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.

Blogs • Rangers • Rangers Playoffs

Apr 17, 2015

Rangers-Penguins Game 1 Thoughts: It’s Too Easy

The Rangers’ Game 1 win over the Penguins felt like the easiest playoff win ever for a team that has made winning in the postseason a challenge.

I didn’t know a 2-1 playoff win could feel easy. I didn’t know clinging to a one-goal lead the final 33:45 of a playoff game could feel easy. I didn’t know any playoff game could feel as easy as Game 1 of the Eastern Conference quarterfinals against the Penguins felt. But that easiness has to do with Sam Rosen screaming for a Rangers goal just 28 seconds into the postseason.

When Derick Brassard split the Penguins defense untouched and unnoticed to bang home a rebound on Rick Nash’s textbook far-side rebound-chance shot to open the playoffs and send the Garden into five-alarm gongshow status before fans could enjoy the first sip of their first-period beers, the game was over. Even if was just a one-goal lead and even if the Rangers would lead by only one goal for 48:23 of the 59:32 following Brassard’s goal, the game never felt close. It never felt like a one-goal game.

I have never felt this confident about the Rangers, especially in the playoffs. Usually the Rangers are in the Penguins’ position. Usually they’re the underdog that clinched on the last day of the season and can’t find a way to score consistently and whose superstars are nowhere to be found in the postseason.

But it was Rick Nash’s shot that led to Derick Brassard’s first-period goal and it was Ryan McDonagh who scored the Rangers’ second goal on assists from Keith Yandle and Mats Zuccarello. The Rangers’ highest-paid player, their $25 million center, their captain, their biggest trade acquisition and their latest contract extension came through. And in net, Henrik Lundqvist was his usual self, as their $59.5 million goalie stopped 24 of the 25 shots he faced.

Meanwhile, for Pittsburgh, Sidney Crosby was pointless, minus-1, held to one shot on goal and limited to 3:42 of ice time in the first period because of the Penguins’ four first-period penalties. Evgeni Malkin was also pointless and had just two shots on goal. Chris Kunitz, also pointless (but if Crosby is pointless then so is Kunitz since that’s the only way he scores) didn’t register a shot on goal and his goalie interference penalty was the first of those four.

The Penguins ran around in the first and were out of position and undisciplined summarizing the team that lost it’s hold on the Met earlier in the season and didn’t clinch a playoff berth until Game 82. However, oddly enough, Crosby didn’t think so.

“We were thinking a little too much, trying to play the right way, be disciplined, play our position,” Crosby said. “But sometimes when you’re thinking out there you’re not reacting and you get behind.”

I don’t know if there has ever been a worse review of a performance (maybe the critics who said Dumb and Dumber To was worth going to see), but that has to be the worst evaluation ever of something that happened. Crosby didn’t get one thing right and his Penguins did the exact opposite of everything he said.

The Rangers dominated the Penguins in the way that everyone who has picked the Rangers to reach the Final for the second straight season imagined they would. Even though most of the Rangers’ quality scoring chances came in the first period, it never felt like the Penguins were really in the game despite the score, and it never felt like they were going to steal the momentum of the game. Martin St. Louis agreed.

“I didn’t think they ever really had the momentum, I don’t think it was a situation where we were trapped.”

It didn’t matter that the Rangers didn’t score again after McDonagh’s goal or that they weren’t able to amount the same type offense in the second and third periods that they had in the first. Like St. Louis, said, “It’s about winning the game, you know? It’s about winning the game.”

And now it’s about winning the next one.

Blogs • Rangers • Rangers Playoffs

Apr 16, 2015

My Rangers’ Playoff Wish Came True

I wanted the Rangers to face the Penguins in the first round of the playoffs. In the past, my wishful thinking hasn’t gone according to plan, but this time it better.

In 2007, I desperately wanted the Yankees to face the Indians in the ALDS. The other option was the Angels and after the four-game loss in the 2002 ALDS and the five-game loss in the 2005 ALDS, I wanted no part of the Angels. I didn’t care that the Indians had won two more games (96) than the Yankees (94) to tie the Red Sox for the best record in the majors or that they had the best 1-2 punch in the league with CC Sabathia (19-7, 3.21) and Fausto Carmona (19-8, 3.06), who no longer goes by that name. To me, the Indians presented the easiest path for the Yankees to the ALCS.

While the Red Sox swept the Angels in their division series, the Yankees were embarrassed 12-3 in Game 1 and then Joba Chamberlain blew a one-run lead in Game 2 thanks to Joe Torre not pulling his team off the field while the Cleveland midges attacked his phenom setup man (while Carmona ate the midges on the mound) and the Yankees lost 2-1 in 11 innings. The Yankees came back to win Game 3 at the Stadium thanks to a relief performance by Phil Hughes and with 19-game winner Chien-Ming Wang facing journeyman Paul Byrd in Game 4, it looked like the series would head back to Cleveland for Game 5. It didn’t. Wang was destroyed in Game 5 like he was in Game 1 and the Yankees’ season was over.

Sure, my rooting interest didn’t matter and the Yankees were going to play the Indians whether I spent the month of September pulling for it, but it was a devastating blow to have wanted a matchup so badly and then to have it backfire as badly as it did. (I don’t need to tell you what happened in the ALCS or World Series that season.)

For the last six weeks of the NHL regular season, I had the Scared of the Rangers Playing Them in the Playoffs Power Rankings. And for most of that time, I wanted the Rangers to face the Capitals in the first round. That might have seemed like the worst idea to 2012 me after what happened in the 2008-09 ad 2010-11 playoffs, but after the Rangers were able to eliminate the Capitals in seven games in 2011-12 and again in 2012-13, the Rangers had overcome the Capitals and 2015 me gladly accepted the matchup. (The Yankees did this with the Angels in the 2009 ALCS. I’m still waiting for them to do it with the Tigers.) But since the end of February, the Capitals became a team no one wanted to play. Meanwhile, in Pittsburgh the Penguins were folding as badly as the Bruins.

So the last time I updated the Scared of the Rangers Playing Them in the Playoffs Power Rankings on April 9 it was the Penguins I wanted to see in the first round. They had gone from NHL power and a lock to win the Met early in the season to playing for their season in Game 82. After years of being a 1- or 2-seed and a lock for playoffs, the Penguins had become the Rangers we have gotten used to: a slightly-above average team that wouldn’t clinch a playoff berth until the second-to-last game or last game of the season.

Before May 7, 2014 when the Penguins beat the Rangers 4-2 in Game 5 to take a 3-1 series lead, I would have never wanted to face the Penguins in any series. But after what happened in Games 5, 6 and 7 last year, the Rangers were able to overcome the Penguins the way they had the Capitals two years prior and it changed everything.

When the Penguins won the Cup in 2008-09, I expected them to become the latest NHL dynasty and mimic the Oilers of the ’80s. Entering the 2009-10 season, they had the best player in the world at age 22 with already one Cup, two Final appearances, a Hart and an Art Ross on his resume. They had the next best player in the world at age 23 with an Art Ross and a Conn Smythe and a former first-overall pick goalie at age 24, who had just held off the Red Wings in seven games. The Penguins were set up for a decade of success with the foundation of their team in the early-20s and the two best players in the world on the same roster. But that Game 7 win in Detroit on June 12, 2009 was the last Stanley Cup Final game they have played.

In that 2009-10 season, the Penguins blew a 3-2 series lead in the first round to the Canadiens and lost Game 7 at home. In 2010-11, they blew a 3-1 series lead in the first round to the Lightning and lost 1-0 in Game 7 at home. In 2011-12, they lost in six games in the first round to the Flyers, allowing 30 goals in the series. In 2012-13, they were swept in the conference finals by the Bruins and scored two goals in the four games. And then last season, they blew a 3-1 series lead in the second round to the Rangers and lost another Game 7 at home.

The Penguins are still waiting to cash in again on their 2003, 2004 and 2005 draft fortunes, and there’s a good chance we are looking at a 30 for 30 in the future being made about how much of a disappointment the Sidney Crosby Penguins era was.

No one is backing the 8-seed Penguins this postseason after their 39-18-10 record on March 12 turned into a 43-27-12 finish and without the Bruins finishing even worse, the Penguins might be home right now looking at another regime change instead of in New York waiting for Game 1. Two years ago, the Penguins were four wins away from reaching the Final. Last year, they were one win away from returning to the conference finals. Now they are the 8-seed in the East and the underdog, which is somewhere and something they haven’t been in the Crosby era.

I got my wish: Rangers-Penguins in the first round. Maybe this is an example of being careful what you wish for since it might not have been the best idea to pull to see the best player in the world and at times the second-best player in the first round. Not exactly the most sound decision. But like with that 2007 ALDS, it was going to happen whether I wanted it to or not. It better not backfire.

Rangers in six.

Podcasts • Rangers • Rangers Playoffs

Apr 15, 2015

Podcast: Adam Herman

The Rangers have never been a team that performs well with expectations and this spring they will play with expectations they haven’t had in 21 years.

The Rangers have never been a team that performs well with expectations and starting on Thursday night, they will play with expectations they haven’t had in 21 years. The post-lockout Rangers have thrived when no one believes in them and when the spotlight is elsewhere, but that will have to change this spring if they are to take the next step in their progression and win in June.

Adam Herman of Blueshirt Banter joined me to talk about how the Rangers quickly built themselves from a mediocre team to an elite one, the expectations and pressure on the Rangers, a review of the Keith Yandle trade and what should worry Rangers fans about the team in the postseason.