Round one is over, and the Rangers have four wins under their belts as they set their sites on their second round opponent, that other team from Pennsylvania, the Pittsburgh Penguins. With less than 48 hours between the end of game seven of their first round match up with the Flyers before game one against the Penguins, there’s very little time for the Rangers to rest up and change their focus. The Rangers and Penguins faced each other four times in the regular season with each team having won twice. Sadly, the Rangers have yet to win a playoff series against the Penguins, but maybe this is the year.
Rangers vs Penguins
The Rangers have a good core group of players who stepped up in round one; Brad Richards, Martin St. Louis, Dominic Moore, Mats Zuccarello and Dan Carcillo that were a big part of defeating the Flyers. It was nice to see all of the Rangers players talk about how they enjoy playing in pressure situations, especially since you know the top ceded Penguins aren’t likely to let up on the pressure. The Rangers will likely be looking to forward Dan Carcillo to get under the skin of Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin, and I expect for him to be playing in even more games in this next round as he has shown a real step up in his level of play and control of his emotions. Mental toughness is certainly going to be one of the keys to getting through the next round, but not as big a key as scoring more goals than the other team. Against the Flyers, the Rangers scored 19 goals in seven games. The goals were relatively evenly spread out over eleven different players. I like seeing that there isn’t any one player who appears to be scoring way more than the others, makes it harder for the Penguins to target one or two players as scoring threats, everyone on this team is contributing. Of course there are still areas the Rangers need to work on such as their abysmal power plays, on the bright side, they’ve been doing very well on the penalty kills. The Rangers were also the top shot blocking team left in the playoffs, they need to continue that strong defense to keep the Penguins scoring at bay.
For the Penguins, at least in the first round, Jussi Jokinen, Evgeni Malkin, and Brandon Sutter appear to be the biggest scoring threats for the Rangers to focus on. And surely Sidney Crosby, the league leader in points during the regular season and Hart trophy nominee, will be looking to score his first goal of the playoffs. The Rangers will definitely be looking to keep him scoreless. The Penguins had a lot of sloppy play against the Columbus Blue Jackets in the first round, and there was a good change that it was the Blue Jackets who were moving on rather than the Penguins. The Penguins need to tighten up both defensively and offensively to beat the Rangers.
And now for the goalie match-up: We’re all well aware that Henrik Lundqvist is an outstanding goaltender and I will punch anyone in the face who says otherwise. I mean, the Penguins will have to really work hard to get one past Lundqvist. Malkin was asked about Lundqvist and he admitted he’s his favorite goalie to watch, but not at all his favorite to play against. Sadly for the Penguins, they have a sieve as their goaltender, I mean, Marc-Andre Fleury who has a .908 save percentage and a 2.81 goals against average for the playoffs. Lundqvist has a .919 save percentage and a 2.11 goals against average for the playoffs. I think it’s pretty clear here which team wins the goalie matchup.
As for injuries, the Rangers are lucky in that it’s only forward Chris Kreider who is still out with a hand injury. The Penguins on the other hand are playing with centers Brandon Sutter, Brian Gibbons and Joe Vitale and defenseman Brooks Orpik (questionable for game one) playing injured.
The Rangers are going into this series as the underdogs, which is fine by me. Everyone loves an underdog, and as any real Rangers fan knows, the Rangers rarely do anything the easy way. If they continue to do what they did last round and play hard and not get frustrated by silly things like bad calls or poor refereeing, then I see them winning this round as well, and my not quite seven-year-old son says the Penguins are “going down.”
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