The psychological damage in the Rangers’ room following Friday’s elimination Game 5 double-overtime defeat to the once and current Kings of the hockey world was manifest and it was real. The combination of pain and emptiness transmitted through the Blueshirts’ sad eyes will linger for some time.
It is only natural these players will be haunted over the coming weeks, and perhaps months, by what-ifs and what-might-have-beens. It is only natural these Rangers will fixate on what they ultimately could not accomplish rather than what they did accomplish over their 58-day run, during which they earned the Eastern Conference championship.
But there is little time for regret. Training camp begins in three months. It is imperative that the Rangers regard their trip to the Stanley Cup finals as a stepping stone and not, well, a final destination. It is necessary the Blueshirts wrap their collective heads around how difficult a chore it will be earn an encore on the grand stage so they can do the necessary work to, in the words of Lennon and McCartney, “Get back … get back … get back to where you once belonged.”
The Penguins of 2008 and 2009 are the only team in the last 30 years to return to the finals a year after losing there. Pittsburgh, of course, beat the Red Wings in seven for the 2009 Cup after having lost in six in their first go-round against Detroit. The 1983 and 1984 Oilers were the last team before that to accomplish the feat, reversing fortune by taking out the Islanders in five a year after succumbing in a sweep to the Dynasty.
The Rangers have won six playoff rounds the last three years. Only the Kings, who have taken 10 series in conjunction with their pair of Cups, have won more. Only the Blackhawks, champions in 2013, have won as many. That’s pretty heady company for the Blueshirts, who have an obligation to meet that standard when they return to the ice in September.
General manager Glen Sather and his staff have the responsibility of bolstering the personnel to attain the three victories by which the Rangers came up short, and without first-rounders for the next two seasons — gone to Tampa Bay in the deadline deal that brought Marty St. Louis into New Yorkers’ lives — to either regenerate the operation or to dangle as trade assets.
So it’s going to be a challenge.
The Rangers simply have to get bigger. The Kings’ size and ability to get to the net and cause havoc for Henrik Lundqvist was the decisive factor in the finals. If the Rangers are playing with the big boys now, it can’t only be about players putting on their big-boy pants. It’s about Sather getting bigger boys who can go toe-to-toe with the Jeff Carters, Dustin Browns and, yes, Milan Lucics of the world.
It is a fait accompli that Brad Richards has worn the Blueshirt for the final time. It is only a matter of timing as to when management exercises its final amnesty buyout on the team’s de-facto captain, whose tenure over three years added class and a substantial presence to the organization. Richards will leave the Rangers in a far better place than when he joined them. His contract has paid for itself.
Derek Stepan elevated his game throughout the tournament, during which he was matched consistently against the opposition’s top line. Stepan’s compete-level was exemplary. In his fourth year in the playoffs, and while playing the final seven games with a contraption affixed to his helmet to protect the broken jaw he sustained in Game 3 against Montreal, Stepan got it. The Rangers have no worries going forward with No. 21.
The same cannot be said regarding Rick Nash, who played extremely hard, but not well enough by any definition in order to justify his status as the go-to difference maker Sather thought he was in acquiring from Columbus two years ago.
Nash cares and he competed, but in the cauldron, No. 61 failed to record a point in the finals while scoring all of three goals in 25 playoff games, all of them against Montreal. He has four goals in 37 playoff games as a Ranger, five in 41 for his career. Maybe next year. Maybe not. It is an issue.
Anton Stralman had a cash-register tournament for the Rangers, who have little choice but to meet the gentlemanly impending free agent’s asking price in order to keep him off the open market. The Blueshirts as well need to extend Marc Staal, who played like a hungry animal through the playoffs.
Mats Zuccarello stood tall. After a couple of years in which he might have been regarded as a novelty item, the Norwegian has established himself as a linchpin up front whose passion, work ethic and creativity are unsurpassed on the Rangers.
Chris Kreider, still raw, is a building block who will only improve with time. He is the personification of the size-and-speed package that defines the 21st century NHL forward. Carl Hagelin, an Olympics and a Cup finals behind him, is blooming.
Last September, in his first days as the Rangers’ coach, Alain Vigneault adopted the motto, “Clean slate.” This coming September, there will be a new theme for the Rangers to live by:
“Get back … get back … get back to where you once belonged.”