Long layoffs can mean a lot in the NHL playoffs, or they can mean nothing. Some teams relish those days off to mend bruises and study video of their opponent. Other teams revile that time, because they don’t practice hard and lose in-game sharpness.
Tonight at Mellon Arena in Pittsburgh, it will be seen what kind of teams the Rangers and Penguins are as they come of seven and nine days of no live hockey, respectively (7, VS., WEPN).
“We want to play and I’m sure they do, too,” Tom Renney told rangers.nhl.com yesterday. “The two teams that have had the longest layoffs are now going at it finally, and I think we’re all excited about that.”
Another surety for the Rangers is that this Penguins team is not the New Jersey Devils. The Rangers beat their cross-river rivals 4-1 in their best-of-7 first-round series. It was not the toughest test for the Blueshirts, who took the first two games at the Prudential Center in Newark, the only loss coming on an overtime goal that ricocheted in off their own defenseman’s skate.
The Rangers held the Devils to 12 goals in the five games; five of those goals were deflections, three of them deflections off a Rangers player.
If the Penguins play anything like they did in the regular season, goals shouldn’t be tough for them to come by. The Pens were seventh in the league during the regular season at 2.93 goals per game. Their power play also is fantastic, ranked fourth (20.4 percent).
They can attribute a lot of that success to their two young guns: 20-year-old captain Sidney Crosby and 21-year-old center Evgeni Malkin. After Crosby went down in the middle of the year with an ankle injury, Malkin took over offensively, ending the season second in the NHL with 106 points (47-59), behind Washington’s Alex Ovechkin.
Rangers captain Jaromir Jagr, who played 11 very successful seasons in Pittsburgh, made some remarks about Crosby and Malkin during this downtime that have garnished a lot of attention. He said neither of the stars could compare to Mario Lemieux, whom Jagr played with and dominated the league in the 1990s.
“With all due respect to Crosby and Malkin,” Jagr said, “they are not Mario Lemieux.”
And with all due respect to Jagr, he’s not the same player he was when he played with Lemieux. Jagr has adapted to the style of play that Renney preaches, one that focuses more on the defensive side of the puck.
It may have taken Jagr a while to change, but now he goes hard to the net more than he ever did and focuses on the getting the puck on goal and scoring any way possible, rather than in highlight fashion. The 36-year-old Czech can activate a $8 million clause in his contract for next year only by winning the Conn Smythe trophy as playoff MVP, otherwise he will become a free agent. Jagr is en route, tallying two goals and six assists while controlling play in the first round.
“He’s been one of the dominant players in the first round of the playoffs,” Renney said of Jagr. “Naturally, we hope that he continues to do that and carries his teammates along with him.”
bcyrgalis@nypost.com