RANGER DANGER
The Blueshirts need a win tonight to avoid falling into 3-0 hole in playoff series against Sens
There are areas for them to shore up, but the Rangers believe since the end of the first period in Game 1 they have been playing relatively well against Ottawa, and yet they find themselves down two-nil heading into Tuesday’s Game 3 at the Garden because of some gutting late-game bounces.
So the Blueshirts try to put Saturday’s crushing loss behind them knowing another defeat would put their season on the brink in that dreaded 3-0 hole, while trying to maintain confidence in the way they play, knowing it’s a different series if they close out Game 2.
“I think every game, we’ve got to treat it like Game 7 and we’ve got to win these games, but I don’t think we should put too much pressure on ourselves,” J.T. Miller said. “We’ve been playing pretty well for a lot of the games, the first two, and we’re setting ourselves up for good situations coming down to the last five minutes. They had some redirects in the last couple of minutes last game. Other than that it’s 1-1.”
Four times in NHL history has a team come back from a 3-0 deficit: The 1942 Maple Leafs in the Stanley Cup Final over Detroit; the 1975 Islanders in the quarterfinals over Pittsburgh; the 2010 Flyers in the second round over Boston and the 2014 Kings in the first round over San Jose. That Kings team ended up defeating the Rangers to win the Cup.
So it’s been done before, but it’s obviously a situation the Rangers are hoping to avoid at all costs. In slightly less harrowing scenarios the Rangers have erased 3-1 series deficits in both 2014 and 2015. There is experience to lean on.
“I think you learn as you move on here. Every year you have different experiences, but I think the guys that have been here for a few years, they understand the importance of staying in the moment obviously,” Henrik Lundqvist said. “It’s so important just to go out and play the game. It doesn’t matter when you start the game (Tuesday) what the series standing is.”
Lundqvist will have to be the player he was the first seven games of these playoffs after allowing a couple of goals in Game 2 he normally stops if he’s on top of his game. The Rangers can defend their net better to prevent some of those redirect opportunities which Jean-Gabriel Pageau made the most of on Saturday.
The first round was defined by the constant punishment the Rangers and Canadiens were dishing out on one another. This second round is physical but not quite at the level at which the Rangers seemed to thrive off against Montreal.
“Sometimes you’re in a game and you’ve got the puck a lot, so when you have the puck you’re not hitting,” Alain Vigneault said. “I thought in the last
game we had the puck quite a bit.”
They continue to work on efficiently breaking through Ottawa’s neutralzone trap in practice.
“The style Ottawa plays sometimes can lull you to sleep, and that’s what you don’t want to be,” Brendan Smith said. “You want to keep your high-intensity, your high-tempo. We’ve got to keep getting back to getting our forecheck. That’s one of our areas we want to get better at is get more bangs and get in on them and strip them of the puck and then play in the offensive zone.”
An extra day allowed the Rangers time to lick their wounds Sunday and clear their minds before returning to the ice Monday afternoon. “We feel fresh and rejuvenated today,” Brady Skjei said.
There can be only one result for the Rangers in Game 3 if they want to turn this second-round series around. Said Vigneault Monday: “We need to win tomorrow.”