NHL

Despite Game 1 victory, Rangers still struggling with man advantage

PITTSBURGH — In the pressure cooker of the playoffs, the smallest problem can grow until it’s all anyone is talking about.

So here are the Rangers, sitting in a room with the elephant known as their power play. By getting out of the first round without its help at all in the final five-plus games, they have now done their best to pretend the problem doesn’t exist.

“Having been in these situations before, I know it’s a topic,” coach Alain Vigneault said Saturday, his team getting the day off from practice after their Game 1 overtime win over the Penguins, with Game 2 of their second-round series on Sunday. “It’s normal for it to be a topic.”

Vigneault has been vocal defending the struggling unit, leading a public campaign of persuasion that a new series means a new challenge, and past failures are forgotten. The Rangers went without a goal in the final 21 man-advantages against the Flyers, and after going 0-for-4 in 7:00 on Friday against the Penguins, now carry an ugly 3-for-33 mark in the postseason.

“It is an important element to winning some games, but for our group, this is a new series for us,” Vigneault said. “[Friday] night didn’t work, we have another game coming.

“We turn the page on the other one,” he said, miming flipping through a book with his hand, “and we focus on that one and we’re going to try and make it work.”

The struggles have reached the point where Vigneault started complimenting some things he saw during the first two power plays on Friday, then said the final two power plays were back-breakers as far as surrendering the momentum during the second period, a time when the Rangers allowed the Penguins to score twice and outshot them 15-4.

“You say to win games, all the parts of your game have to be going,” Vigneault said. “I believe that, but I do believe that sometimes you can not score on your power play and still build momentum.”

Brad Richards, who plays almost the entirety of every power play, said he believes the problem has become mental.

“In my opinion, we’re trying to look for things and map it out a little too much,” Richards said. “That happens sometimes in a playoffs series — you’re watching them so much, seeing so much video, you’re trying to exploit things. I think really you just have to play hockey. That’s why we’re out there, to be creative.”

If at times players say creativity gets stifled, and they therefore start reverting to the old cliché of “gripping their stick” or “trying too hard,” well, Vigneault’s not buying it.

“Players might feel sometimes, they might say they’re a little bit tight or whatever — I don’t totally agree with that,” he said. “We’ll come up with a plan and we’ll try and execute it and make it work.”

Last postseason, former Rangers coach John Tortorella tried to downplay the struggles of the power play as it went 4-for-44 en route to a second-round ouster by the Bruins, followed soon thereafter by his firing.

This year, it’s a different coach, but the same attitude. Vigneault hopes it’s a different result.

“It is a topic, it is there,” Vigneault said, “but I don’t think it has an impact on the game moving forward, not in my estimation.”