For the Rangers players who were with the team a year ago, which represents the majority of their locker room, the pain is not completely over.
And it won’t. Not until more is done this month, next month and perhaps June.
The Rangers exited the Stanley Cup Playoffs far too early, as expected, when they blew a 2-0 series lead and lost to the Devils in seven games in the first round on last spring.
The exorcism of those demons begins Sunday afternoon at the Garden, where the Rangers will play Game 1 against a Washington Capitals team they should dispatch on their way to a deeper run toward these playoffs.
“Going home early, obviously it’s tough and you’re okay with that,” Rangers captain Jacob Trouba said. “Throughout the season, you’re constantly asking yourself, ‘How can I be better prepared for this moment?’ It’s something we’ve been working on all year, trying to get back to this point and prove to ourselves that we can do it.
In the playoffs.
There’s a 30-year Stanley Cup drought, and everyone associated with the Rangers is hoping there’s a little bit of 1994 in the air this spring.
The Rangers did everything they needed to do in the regular season and entered the playoffs as Presidents’ Trophy winners, having amassed 114 points and 55 wins – both franchise records. That earned them playing at home for as long as they stay alive in these playoffs.
The elephant on the ice here is the pressure of the Presidents’ Trophy and how the Rangers are handling it. Hopefully, from their perspective, they’ll fare better than last year’s Bruins, who put up 135 points – the most points of any team to win the Presidents’ Trophy since its inception in 1985-1986 – and were eliminated from the playoffs in the first round by the Florida Panthers.
The pressure of the Presidents’ Trophy is real. Winning it provides no guarantee of playoff success. Of the 37 teams that have won it, only eight have won the Stanley Cup and three others have lost in the finals.
The last team to win the Presidents’ Trophy and the Stanley Cup in the same season was the Chicago Blackhawks in 2012-13. The last team to win the Presidents’ Trophy and advance further than the first two rounds of the playoffs was the 2014-15 Rangers, who lost in the conference finals.
The Capitals entered the playoffs at the 11th hour thanks to four wins in their last five games. Although they are in rebuilding mode, they still have former champions on their roster, starting with Alex Ovechkin, one of the elite shooters of all time. The Capitals, who have split four games with the Rangers this season, are also a dangerous opponent because they have nothing to lose.
That’s why Rangers center Mika Zibanejad said Friday after practice, “You have to try to handle” the pressure that comes with being the top-seeded team playing the top seed. low.
“There will be times on the show where things don’t go well for you and we just have to remember what we’ve done and what makes us successful and trust ourselves and what we’ve done.” , Zibanejad said.
There are plenty of reasons to believe the Rangers will get there, starting with the fact that they are a better, more talented and deeper team than Washington.
Beyond this evidence, the way in which the Rangers players fought until the end of the regular season to win the Presidents’ Trophy should bode well that there will be no respite in this series elimination.
“They played some desperate hockey against them (regular season) and were able to win some big games,” Rangers defenseman Ryan Lindgren said of the Capitals. “But we fought for everything too, until the last match. We were trying to play the best hockey possible, so every point mattered to us. This should definitely help.
It should.
The same goes for the presence of their coach, Peter Laviolette, who is in his first year with the team and who made the difference. Laviolette did a brilliant job of keeping his players motivated and hungry – even long after they had clinched a playoff spot and could have made a run at the playoffs.
“Any team that comes in, they’re capable: us, them, anyone,” Laviolette said. “I’ve seen the best teams win and the last guys in the gate win as well. You have to play well when the puck drops.
Laviolette said “not one second” talked to the players about the early elimination from the playoffs last season. “That was last year and it’s not my place to talk about it,” he said.
He prefers to build on what has been done so far this season, which constitutes the best regular season in the league.
“I think it can give a little bit of confidence, but at the end of the day, that’s not what you should count on,” Laviolette said. “You should trust the work you do and make sure the work fits the game plan when the puck drops for the first game. »
New York Post
