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Apr 30, 2014

Rangers-Flyers Game 6 Thoughts: It’s Never Easy

The Rangers will play in another Game 7 after their embarrassing effort in Philadelphia with a chance to eliminate the Flyers.

Two periods was enough. I couldn’t take any more Rangers hockey in Game 6 after the embarrassing performance and effort put on in the first 40 minutes. So I turned the game off. The only problem was CC Sabathia was busy blowing another lead (this time to the worst offense in baseball in the Mariners), so I was forced back to the Rangers, hoping that they would pull off a Bruins-like comeback from last year’s Game 7 against the Maple Leafs.

The Rangers have now lost 12 consecutive games when leading in a series and after dominating the first period in Game 6, they came out for a Sunday skate in the second period and a one-goal deficit quickly got out of hand. Now one game stands between the Rangers and the Penguins and the Rangers and the offseason. There’s a chance on Wednesday night, the hate-watching of the playoffs will begin for me with the next Rangers game not for over five months. With that notion and the notion that finality will be in the Garden for both teams on Wednesday, I don’t feel well enough to put together Thoughts on Game 6, but I will.

– Ladies and gentlemen, Dan Girardi! If you thought giving Girardi a six-year, $33 million extension was a bad idea then you must have had a fun time watching Game 6. Girardi was an embarrassment on defense watching plays develop in front of him and then letting players get behind him with little to no effort trying to clear out the front of the net. After Girardi’s disastrous Game 2 and now Game 6, he has been every bit as bad in this series as he was a year ago against the Bruins in the five-game loss. And aside from a few weeks during the post-Olympic break, Girardi has now been playing poorly consistently for an entire calendar year. For as good as Ryan McDonagh has been, imagine how good he might look if anyone other than Girardi was his defensive partner. Well, if his defensive partner were anybody other than …

– Ladies and gentlemen, Anton Stralman! If you’re Raphael Diaz and you keep getting scratched for Anton Stalman, how are you not showing up to playoff games drunk wearing a Flyers jersey? We are well past the point with Stralman where you have to point out when he does something good to justify his presence in the lineup and we are at the point where he can no longer dress for games. He is the biggest defensive liability on the team, which is saying a lot about a team that also has Dan Girardi and John Moore, and he provides zero offense (he now has one goal and 13 assists in 87 games this year). Alain Vigneault doesn’t need to scratch Anton Stralman for Game 7, he has to.

– I’m tired of hearing about Derek Stepan. Unless he’s sitting on the doorstep or the far post wide open on the power play and the puck is placed perfectly on his tape, he isn’t scoring. He has been soft on the puck for the entire series, has made horrible decisions at the blue line trying to create offense and has been unable to capitalize on what should be freebies. Then again, it’s not like he has missed as many opportunities as …

– Benoit Pouliot. When the Rangers signed Benoit Pouliot, my former college roommate and Bruins beat writer for The Hockey Writers Mike Miccoli told me, “He has 39 scoring chances a game and never scores then takes stupid penalties.” It was the most spot-on scouting report I have ever heard of a player in any sport. It’s incredible to think Pouliot has never scored more than 16 goals in an NHL season when you watch how many high-quality chances he has every game, but with the way he handles open looks in the slot, he never will score 20 goals in the NHL.

– Rick Nash isn’t Alex Rodriguez. He’s not even Mark Teixeira or Robinson Cano and certainly not Nick Swisher. He’s a player who just happens to have played six playoff game this year and has no goals and four assists. And even without Nash scoring a goal, the Rangers are one win away from advancing to the conference semifinals and hockey’s Elite Eight and playing the Penguins. But on Wednesday night at the Garden, the Rangers need Nash. They need Rick Nash to be the player I was willing to give up the farm for at the 2012 deadline and the player they traded for the following summer. If Nash doesn’t score in Game 7 and the Rangers don’t advance, he should be prepared for the criticism that will come with going goalless in a seven-game series against the hated Flyers. He will have earned it.

– Henrik Lundqvist is one loss away from having his ability to win in the playoffs called into question again. As ridiculous as it is, especially after Game 6 when he was hung out to dry, it’s going to happen. Non-Rangers fans love nothing more than to spit out the lazy idea that Lundqvist is a different goalie in the postseason than he is in the regular season even though the numbers prove he is the exact same and that it’s more about the Rangers even worse inability to score in Games 83 and beyond. Lundqvist still hasn’t stolen a game like I said he would at some point in this series and now he only has one chance left to do it. If the Rangers win Game 7 without Lundqvist stealing it then that means the offense carried the team to the second round and I can’t see that happening after the last two games. Henrik Lundqvist needs to close out the Flyers single-handedly or at least go into Game 7 thinking he needs to.

I really believed this postseason would be different. I really believed the Rangers would make quick work of the Flyers (I predicted the Rangers would win in five games). I really believed the Rangers would advance to the conference semis without facing elimination. But here we are. The Rangers are in the same place they were a year ago and the year before that and three years before that. Game 7 in the first round. Nothing is ever easy with the Rangers. Nothing.

Apr 21, 2014

Rangers-Flyers Game 2 Thoughts: Best-of-5

The Rangers lost a two-goal lead, Game 2, a chance to take command of the series and home-ice advantage against the Flyers and now it’s a best-of-5 series.

Did I think Game 2 was over? Of course I did. When Benoit Pouliot scored 4:18 after Martin St. Louis completed the rare perfect 3-on-2, not only did I think Game 2 was over, I thought the series was over.

The Rangers were coming off a 4-1 Game 1 win and had the Flyers in an early two-goal deficit with Ray Emery proving why Flyers fans were hoping Steve Mason would play Game 2, even an injured Steve Mason. And then everything changed. The Rangers gave away a two-goal lead, Game 2 and home-ice advantage in the series, and now they head to Philadelphia in what has become a best-of-5 series with the Flyers having home-ice, as if those two additional regular-season wins and regulation wins never happened.

– Game 2 changed when Ryan McDonagh and Dan Girardi decided that playing defense wasn’t something that interested them in a Stanley Cup Playoff game. I’m willing to give McDonagh a pass for how he played (or didn’t really care to play) Jakub Voracek on his goal because without McDonagh, the Rangers aren’t even in the playoffs. But I’m not willing to give Dan Girardi a free pass, especially after how he single-handedly handed the Bruins the series a year ago. I will let this picture do all the work in showing Girardi’s “effort” to complement McDonagh’s gliding half-assed poke check.

What was Dan Girardi doing here? Maybe for a moment he thought he was at the Keefe household drinking wine and eating lasagna and porchetta and watching Rangers playoff hockey. He didn’t have the wine or lasagna or porchetta, but he did watch the play and goal develop just like I did from a couch, he just happened to have a better seat.

This goal not only cut the two-goal lead in half before going on to prove, but it showed the Flyers after a 15-shot effort in Game 1 that the Rangers’ defense could be beat and that Henrik Lundqvist could be beat without needing a deflection or lucky bounce. The goal shifted the momentum and feel of the game and the Rangers became another statistic in the “worst lead in hockey” theory, proving that if they weren’t going to score the third goal to take a 3-0 lead, they were were better off only having one.

– Before the series I talked with Sam Carchidi of The Philadelphia Inquirer about the Flyers’ strategy coming into the series and if they would look to draw the Rangers into a physical game and get them off their finesse game. He thought that could be the case and that the Flyers would want to play physical, but be smart about it.

In Game 1, the Flyers were dumb about being physical, especially as the game got out of hand. And in Game 2, they opened the game the same way, getting two penalties within the first 6:55 of the game, one of which the Rangers scored a power-play goal on. But once Carl Hagelin got called for holding at 9:56 of the first period, the Rangers became the undisciplined team. The Flyers got what they came into the series wanting and just in time before Game 2 and the series got out of hand.

– Two diving calls against one team in the same game in the playoffs? Yes, this is real life.

– At times, Rick Nash can be one of the best pure goal scorers in the world. These times happen when he is riding one of his patented hot steaks that I talked about here. This postseason, Nash has two assists in two playoff games and has played well. But with the Rangers in now two postseasons, Nash has one playoff goal in 14 games. That’s not going to cut it.

I have refrained from saying anything negative about Nash because I have always been a fan of his since his 2002-03 rookie season and because I campaigned so hard for the Rangers to trade for him at the 2011-12 Trade Deadline, blamed the Eastern Conference finals loss on the lack of trading for him and then campaigned hard again fora trade for him in the summer before it eventually happened. I always said it would take a lot for me to start “Ladies and gentlemen”-ing Rick Nash, but we are nearing that point if he doesn’t start producing the way he can and has for long stretches of time.

– Here is what I said about Henrik Lundqvist after Game 1:

It was as if the Rangers stole a win without having to use their ace and when you figure that Lundqvist will steal AT LEAST one game in this series, getting by without needing to rely on him in one game, especially Game 1, could be the difference in the series.

Well, now we have played two games in which Lundqvist hasn’t stolen a game for the Rangers or even really looked like the Henrik Lundqvist we saw during the regular season. I guess he could have looked as good as possible in Game 1, but he was never really tested, so it’s hard to say other than that he had allowed one goal and had a .933 save percentage. It’s time for Lundqvist to steal that game or games now.

– What the eff happened when Henrik Lundqvist was supposed to be pulled for an extra attacker? I blame Lundqvist for what happened because he came nearly all the way to the blue and then stopped either after not getting a signal to come to the bench or being unsure if he was given the signal to go to the bench. But when Lundqvist started skating toward the bench, Brad Richards, who was going to go for Lundqvist, must have seen Lundqvist headed toward the bench and hopped the bench in order to time Lundqvist’s arrival to give him the most amount of time to join the play. So when Lundqvist decided to stop, Richards had likely assumed he was arriving as he was joining the forecheck. Chances are the Rangers lose the game 3-2 or even 4-2, like they did, had they not been called for too many men. But they never even gave themselves a chance for a last-minute, empty-net miracle. It was the perfect ending for a perfect Game 2 collapse.

Apr 18, 2014

Rangers-Flyers Game 1 Thoughts: The Tortorella Era Nerves Are Gone

After the Rangers’ Game 1 win over the Flyers, I might have underestimated this Rangers team by predicting them to win the series in five games.

The moment Andrew MacDonald’s shot went past Henrik Lundqvist at 7:28 of the first period, my emotions that had been filled of positive anticipation were deflated and left me feeling like the Camp Hope campers watching Lars destroy “The Blob” in Heavyweights. “Here we go again” is the G-rated version of what I thought with the Flyers celebrating in front of a quickly quieted Garden. Another playoff game the Rangers were trailing in and trailing early in and another game where it looked like even if Henrik Lundqvist stood on his head, it wouldn’t be enough.

My thoughts and feelings after the game were an overreaction to just 7:28 of a seven-game series, but they were thoughts and feelings that I had been trained to experience since the 2008-09 season when John Tortorella became the head coach. I had learned to except the fact that one goal might be all the Rangers would get in postseason games during Tortorella’s tenure and under Tortorella’s system. In the 44 playoff games Tortorella coached the Rangers for from 2008-09 to 2012-13, the Rangers scored 78 goals or 1.77 goals per game. So I was within reason to be worried about the opening minutes of Game 1.

But then at 10:53 of the first period, Mats Zuccarello scored to tie the game and after a sloppy start to the game, the Rangers went on to dominate play for the rest of the game and my early feelings about not being able to score crept back in as I started to envision a game in which the Rangers would control the play and possession and hold a ridiculous margin in shots, but still find a way to lose the game 2-1 either in the third period or in overtime. And then Brad Richards turned back the clock to the pre-2011-12 season offseason or even to the 2003-04 playoffs and led the Rangers to a win.

I predicted the Rangers would win the series in five games, but after Thursday night’s game it feels like I might have underestimated the Rangers with that prediction.

– The last playoff game Brad Richards played in was the Rangers’ 2-1 Game 3 loss to the Bruins last May 21. At the time, we didn’t know that Tortorella would decide to scratch his supposed good friend, who won the Conn Smythe and the Cup for the coach, who would likely be out of the league as a head coach without the 2003-04 playoffs on his resume. But when Tortorella decided to start teaching lessons and make examples of former playoff MVPs and a Ranger who wears an “A” with the Rangers’ season on the line it felt like that 2-1 Game 3 loss would be the last time we would see Richards in a Rangers jersey. Thankfully, it wasn’t.

Richards’ power-play goal gave the Rangers a 2-1 lead at 8:22 of the third period (and turned out to be the game-winner) and his assists at 9:09 and 15:52 sealed the deal. For what seemed like the first time in a long time and the first of just a few times, he looked comfortable on the point on the power play, taking charge of the unit and controlling the play during the double minor.

Glen Sather decided not to buy out Richards contract before this season and gave him a chance to play under Alain Vigneault and play in an offensive system that could return him to his pre-Rangers form and bring out the best in what was once a point-per-game (or better) player. And on Thursday night, after a 20-31-51 regular season, Richards repaid Sather for not buying him out, even if he will never be able to repay him for his nine-year, $60 million contract.

– With the Rangers leading 4-1 in the final minutes and the game in the bag, I started to think about the job Sather had done in turning the team into a strictly blue-collar, rely-on-Lundqvist team into a finesse team and one that can beat you offensively, defensively (at times) and in goal. The Ryan Callahan trade played a big part in erasing the way the Rangers played to how they play now and completed the transition of the Tortorella Rangers to the Vigneault Rangers, (even if Callahan was came up with Tom Renney as head coach, he was textbook Tortorella system player). While I don’t usually credit Sather for the job he has (and rightfully so) he did a good job in building the 2013-14 Rangers. Though I realize I might be a little too high on them after just one playoff game and this could all change by Easter afternoon.

– When Martin St. Louis was traded to the Rangers, I thought he would play with Rick Nash, mainly because I wanted him to. Pair your best scorer with your best playmaker. Sure, it might create a bit of a balance issue, but you could finally create a line that other teams have to prepare for and defend against and a line that makes the opposition and their fans think “Oh eff, THAT line is out there.” It’s been a while since the Rangers had a line like that ever since Jaromir Jagr left the team.

I thought a line of St. Louis, Nash and Brad Richards would make the most sense given the history and chemistry and positions, even if it would create even more unbalance. But having Derek Stepan as the center for St. Louis and Nash was good enough. And after the second time of trying St. Louis with Nash since the March 5 date, it looks like Vigneault is going to keep them together and it’s the right move.

– If the Rangers don’t win the Stanley Cup, Henrik Lundqvist will take the brunt of the blame. He always does. Despite the 1.77 goals per playoff game during the Tortorella era, it’s still on Lundqvist when the Rangers are eliminated. The Rangers went 19-25 in the playoffs under Tortorella and in those 25 playoff losses, the Rangers scored 36 goals or 1.44 goals per game. Here is the breakdown by goals scored in the losses and how many times they scored each amount of goals:

0 goals: 5
1 goal: 9
2 goals: 8
3 goals: 3
4 or more goals: 0

That’s 14 playoff losses when the Rangers couldn’t score more than one goal and 22 when they couldn’t score more than two, so if Henrik Lundqvist wasn’t going to be perfect in every postseason game, he had to be pretty close to it for the Rangers to win. And even then, it wasn’t enough.

But in Game 1 of the 2013-14 playoffs with the 2013-14 Rangers under a different head coach, Lundqvist didn’t need to be perfect or even close to it. The Flyers only had 15 shots and Lundqvist stopped 14 of them and was basically given the night off after having a week off. It was as if the Rangers stole a win without having to use their ace and when you figure that Lundqvist will steal AT LEAST one game in this series, getting by without needing to rely on him in one game, especially Game 1, could be the difference in the series.

One down, 15 to go.

Podcasts • Rangers • Rangers Playoffs

Apr 17, 2014

Podcast: Sam Carchidi

Sam Carchidi of The Philadelphia Inquirer joins me to talk about joined me to talk about the Rangers-Flyers series and why Flyers fans would have been more confident facing another team in the first round.

After predicting the Rangers to get past the Flyers in five games, I’m not as optimistic as I once was. The more I read and think about the series and listen to others analyze it, my confidence level for the Rangers has drastically declined. But maybe that’s a good thing since in the past when I have been high on the Rangers, they have let me down.

Sam Carchidi, the Flyers beat writer for The Philadelphia Inquirer, joined me to talk about the Rangers-Flyers series, what Craig Berube’s strategy will be against the Rangers and why Flyers fans would have been more confident facing another team in the first round.

Blogs • Rangers • Rangers Playoffs

Apr 16, 2014

Rangers-Flyers Has ‘The Feel’

I got my wish and the Rangers will play the Flyers in the playoffs for the first time since the 1996-97 conference finals, but this time things will end differently for the Blueshirts.

I can’t believe it’s been 28 weeks since I was turning on MSG for the first time in months to watch the Rangers open the season in Phoenix on Oct. 3. And I can’t believe it’s been nearly just as long since I was turning off MSG and thinking about not turning it on again this season after the Rangers were embarrassed 9-2 by the Sharks on Oct. 8.

The Rangers started the season with their third and final season-opening extended road trip and went 3-6-0, getting outscored 33-15 in the process with Alain Vigneault’s offensive system heavily criticized. They returned to New York for their home opener on Oct. 29 and were shut out 2-0 by the Canadiens and after almost a month of hockey found themselves in last place. But they quickly turned it around, going 6-1-0 between Oct. 29 and Nov. 10 and looked like the Real Rangers and the team we expected to see in 2013-14 (and the team we expected to see in 2012-13 for that matter).

Following Henrik Lundqvist’s extension in the first week of December, the Rangers went into another slump, going 0-3-1 from Dec. 7 to Dec. 12, before beating the Flames in a shootout at the Garden on Dec. 15 for their first two-point game in 10 days. After that win, they went on a 16-7-2 tear until the Olympic break, winning in Chicago against the defending champions and sweeping the Stadium Series along the way.

They returned from their 20-day break with heavy rumors of a potential Ryan Callahan trade surrounding the team and after three post-break games, Callahan was gone and Martin St. Louis was a Ranger after what evolved into a mandatory move for Glen Sather. The Rangers became a better team with St. Louis, but still entered the final 10 games of the season not knowing if they would play an 83rd game this season.

Following the 1-0 loss to the Sharks, on March 16, which was part of a 1-3-0 stretch from March 11-16, I wasn’t sure if we would be here. I wasn’t sure if I would be watching Rangers playoff hockey this year or hate-watching the playoffs and simply watching because it’s playoff hockey and not because I cared who won or lost during the best time of the year. But here we are. After 82 games and highs and lows and winning streaks that not even Mike McDermott could have handled or losing streaks that not even Joey Knish could have helped dig Rangers fans out of, here we are on the eve of the postseason and the eve of the first Rangers-Flyers playoff series since the 1996-97 Eastern Conference finals.

I didn’t want the Rangers to play the Flyers in the first round, I needed the Rangers to play the Flyers in the first round. After seeing the Capitals in the first round in 2012-13, 2010-11 and 2008-09 (and the conference semis in 2011-12), I didn’t need something different in the postseason just for the sake of watching something different, I needed something different because it’s the Flyers and because Rangers-Flyers still has “the feel” of something special in an age where “the feel” is hard to find. It’s hard to describe what “the feel” is when it comes to a rivalry, whether or old of new, but you know it when you have it the way Rangers-Devils has had it and Rangers-Islanders use to have it and Bruins-Canadiens has always had it and Bruins-Canucks built it. And if Rangers-Flyers can continually give you “the feel” in the regular season after 17 years without a playoff series, imagine what it could do in a playoff series after such a drought. That’s why I needed this series to happen.

I thought after the 2007 ALDS when I wanted nothing more than the Yankees to face the Indians, I would have finally learned the “be careful what you wish for” lesson, but I apparently haven’t in asking for the Rangers to face the Flyers. I wanted no part of the Blue Jackets or the Columbus Rangers because of their 2011-12 Rangers feel (not because of their roster, but because of the way they win) and Sergei Bobrovsky. They have changed the image of what the Blue Jackets have represented since entering the league in 2000 and making just their second playoff appearance, they would have been a tough out for anyone and that includes the Penguins, who they will face. I got my wish. I got Rangers-Flyers and I can only hope it turns into Rangers-Penguins or Rangers-Blue Jackets a couple weeks from now and the hockey season continues for more than just a week or two.

I didn’t feel this good about the Rangers entering the playoffs two years ago when they were the No. 1 seed coming off a 51-win and 109-point season and with Henrik Lundqvist posting fake life numbers. But two years ago, the Rangers’ path to the Stanley Cup Final was paved like the New York Football Giants’ path to Super Bowl XLVI once the Saints were eliminated because the Bruins and Penguins were eliminated in the first round and the Flyers were gone in the second. I thought the stars had aligned with the Rangers facing the Devils in the conference finals, but the Rangers’ scoring inconsistencies (and lack of trading for Rick Nash at the deadline) were finally too much to overcome once the ridiculous bounces stopped going their way (and they still got a lot of ridiculous bounces to go their way in the six games).

On this Stanley Cup Playoffs Eve, I feel as good as I could possibly feel about the Rangers and that’s not necessarily a good thing. But like the Giants, the Rangers don’t perform well with expectations or with hype or with a bandwagon that’s gaining steam. They were embarrassed by the Bruins in the conference semis last May after everyone picked the Rangers to win the series, they couldn’t get past what seemed to be an inferior 6-seeded Devils team the year before despite being a 1-seed, the year before that they clinched the 8-seed in Game 82, the year before that they missed out on the playoffs with a Game 82 shootout loss and the year before that were an 8-seed and blew a 3-1 series lead in the first round. Nothing has ever come easy with the Rangers and I don’t expect this spring to be any different, but maybe it’s better that way.

I was 10 years old and in fifth grade for the 1996-97 conference finals when the Rangers were easily handled by the Flyers in five games. This time, 17 years later, I think it will go five games once again.

Rangers in five.