PITTSBURGH — Now that there is one round down, where do the Rangers stand?
Following Wednesday’s thrilling 2-1 Game 7 win over the Flyers, the Rangers boarded a plane Thursday and headed to western Pennsylvania, where Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and the Penguins await the start of their second-round playoff series on Friday night at the CONSOL Energy Center.
Though long series have caught up to the Rangers in the past, this is a new season, under a new coach, with a new group of players. It’s also a new playoff format, delaying a potential matchup with the mighty Bruins until the conference finals.
“It’s a sense of relief,” Rick Nash said after Game 7. “We couldn’t get the job done on the first chance, so it’s a moment of relief and excitement. You are moving on to the next series.”
The new official name for this series is the Metropolitan Division finals, as the NHL got the playoff bracket the league wanted, as well as the competitive inequity that came with it. The Bruins, Presidents’ Trophy winners for having the league’s best regular-season record, are facing the conference’s third-best team in the Canadiens. Boston hammered the Rangers in last season’s second round, a five-game defeat that was hardly competitive.
So the Rangers, now the team with the worst record remaining in the East, are facing the conference’s second-best team in the Penguins, a team whose warts were put on full display in a six-game first-round battle with Brandon Dubinsky and the Blue Jackets. Most notable of those is Marc-Andre Fleury, who has not been the same goalie since he led the Pens to the 2009 Stanley Cup.
In last season’s first round, Fleury did his best to give it away to the upstart Islanders, getting pulled mid-series in favor of veteran Tomas Vokoun. Pittsburgh won in six games, but Fleury clearly began to show a distaste — or at least displeasure in his play — during big games.
That continued in the series with the Jackets, when Fleury was barely able to hold on to a 4-0 third-period lead in Game 6, squeaking out a 4-3 win to advance.
The comparison between Fleury and the Rangers’ own backstop, Henrik Lundqvist, surely favors the Blueshirts. Lundqvist played admirably against the Flyers, allowing for the Rangers to not play their best and still find a way to escape and move on to the second round for the third consecutive season.
“It was just another way to win a series, which is great for our experience as a team,” alternate captain Brad Richards said.
That experience is rooted most deeply in what happened two seasons ago, when Richards & Co. were within two wins of getting to the Stanley Cup Finals. They had played two grueling seven-game series leading up to the conference final against the Devils, and by the time they got to Newark, they were pretty well burned out.
Yet that was under former coach John Tortorella, and was a roster filled more with grit than skill and speed. Now, under Alain Vigneault, the team is swifter and plays a less grinding style. The attitude as a whole has changed so much the rough-and-tumble Flyers were never able to get under the Rangers’ skin.
Cool demeanor now runs the day, and the setting has turned in a favorable direction, away from Boston — at least for now.
“We will be ready to go,” Richards said, “and we can’t wait.”