The New York Rangers were the first team to jump into the NHL playoffs with a 6-5 overtime victory over the Philadelphia Flyers on March 26, the “X” next to their name in the standings a welcome and inevitable reward for a season in which their elite talent level, depth of roster and drive allowed them to weather a rough winter stretch and overcome injuries to punch their ticket to the postseason.
As the Rangers ready themselves for the tournament, though, critical work and decisions remain over their last nine games – a final block of the schedule that will likely prove critical to their hopes of lifting the Stanley Cup in June.
Having gone 7-2-0 over a nine-game, 15-game gauntlet that included such fellow championship contenders as the Carolina Hurricanes, Tampa Bay Lightning, Winnipeg Jets, Boston Bruins and Florida Panthers, the Blueshirts didn’t miss a beat against the Flyers, overcoming a less-than-disciplined defensive effort with their trademark resilience, rallying from 2-0 down to prevail at Madison Square Garden.
The Rangers exhibited it again in their final regular-season matchup with an elite team, besting the Colorado Avalanche 3-2 in a shootout on the road March 28 for their fourth straight win, keeping them atop the NHL standings. The Blueshirts’ remaining opponents are the Arizona Coyotes, Pittsburgh Penguins, New Jersey Devils, Detroit Red Wings, Montreal Canadiens, New York Islanders (twice), the Flyers again and the Ottawa Senators to close out the regular season.
With the exception of Philadelphia, which is fighting to stay in playoff position, all of those teams sit outside the postseason picture. Six of the nine contests will come at home. All but one are in the Eastern Time Zone, and the Rangers don’t have any back-to-backs remaining.
Rangers Sound Focused on Winning Division, Top Seed in East
So is it time to take it easy and let the injuries heal, to get players rest and ramp down the intensity as this tremendous regular season, in which the Metropolitan Division leaders have hit 100 points for the third straight time, draws toward a conclusion?
It didn’t sound like that in the dressing room after the victory over the Flyers.
“Carolina has won the division, what, three years in a row?” center Mika Zibanejad asked after recording a goal and an assist. “We want it.
“With all the work we’ve put in this season, we’re right there and we want to win the division. Of course.” (From ‘Rangers Seeking Bigger Prizes After Checking Off First Playoff Goal’, New York Post, 3/27/24)
Zibanejad’s answer was anything but the standard line that reflects player pride, a platitude that a team of course never wants to back off. Though being a top seed recently has proven to be anything but a guaranteed difference-maker in the NHL playoffs (see especially Boston, last season), the Rangers stand to reap real benefits from taking advantage of a favorable closing stretch and holding off the Hurricanes, who sit three points back and have played one more game than the Blueshirts, and besting the Bruins, Hurricanes and Panthers for the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference.
That’s because the Rangers would do very well to avoid a first-round matchup with the Lightning, who are looking like their Stanley Cup selves again with a 7-0-1 surge that has them firmly in the first wild-card spot in the East. It’s increasingly possible Tampa Bay could catch the Toronto Maple Leafs, who are four points ahead with a game in hand, for the three seed in the Atlantic Division, but if not, the Lightning would represent an undesirable opening opponent for a Blueshirts team that’s been at or near the top of the league all season.
Winning the Metro but ending up as the second seed could very well push the Rangers into a clash with the big, talented and championship-tested Lightning, who rolled over the Blueshirts 6-3 at home March 14 in their most recent meeting. The chance to avert a first-round showdown with the club that eliminated the Rangers from the Eastern Conference Final two years ago after spotting them the first two games should provide plenty of motivation for Zibanejad and his teammates.
Related: 3 Lessons the Rangers Can Learn From Recent Playoff Failures
Much better initial opponents, at least in theory? The Washington Capitals, whose late-season push has them in the eighth and final postseason berth; the scrappy but young Flyers, whom the Rangers have beaten in all three meetings so far this season; or the Red Wings, Devils or Islanders, all significantly flawed teams that are fighting to grab the final wild-card spot.
No series is ever easy, but those hypothetical matchups sound a lot better than one with Brayden Point, Nikita Kucherov and the rest of the core of the 2020 and 2021 Stanley Cup champs.
“If you start looking too far ahead into a plan or if you start remembering too much of what happened four days ago, I think you can get lost,” coach Peter Laviolette said after the victory over Philadelphia. “I think you’ve got to stay current with what you’re doing. Our guys have done a really good job of that when the schedule’s been tough. We’re banged up a little bit.
“It wasn’t our best tonight, yet we still found a way to win. … If you can do it in the current moment enough times, you get to a position to have to answer a question like (what it means to make the playoffs). I think our guys have worked hard, I think we’ve done a lot of good things the way we’ve played the game; we’ve gotta continue to do that down the stretch.”
The idea of keeping the foot on the gas seems simple enough. With a clear objective and a desire to be sharp and at their best entering the tournament, the Rangers shouldn’t treat this final stretch any differently than they did the recently-concluded nine-game test, the thinking goes. And yet …
Laviolette’s Decisions Down the Stretch Could Prove Pivotal to Playoff Fortunes
There’s another side to this. Capturing the top seed in the conference is a step toward winning the Stanley Cup, not the goal. Tiring out key personnel simply to gain a more favorable first-round matchup, when 16 hard-fought victories are required to hoist the chalice, could end up being a source of long-term regret – especially with a high seed all but secured.
The Rangers deepened their lineup at the trade deadline, but they still lean heavily on veteran stars Zibanejad, Artemi Panarin, Vincent Trocheck, Chris Kreider and Adam Fox, among others. Laviolette does it more than any of his recent predecessors, often double-shifting Panarin and his fellow top-sixers based on game situation. How hard will he push them over the final two plus-weeks, especially against lesser opponents, to nail down the No. 1 spot in the East?
One need look no further than last season’s first-round flameout against the Devils, an excruciating seven-game loss that has unquestionably contributed to driving this season’s success. New Jersey was the faster team, but the Rangers also looked tired. Fox seemed worn down by the final game; his teammates appeared to lack energy as the series went on. The 4-0 loss that completed New Jersey’s comeback from a two-games-to-none deficit was marked by little pushback from the Blueshirts.
The lesson: The need for crispness, being playoff-ready and earning a more desirable first-round opponent must be balanced with the need to have plenty in the tank to navigate the grinding, unpredictable NHL postseason tournament. Laviolette has the opportunity to thread that needle here – something he, a Stanley Cup-winning coach in 2005-06 with Carolina, should certainly know how to do.
That may mean giving more ice time to his bottom six forwards and third-pair defensemen, and having faith they can produce enough with the extended minutes to help the Rangers keep the points coming and the top seed in sight. It may mean a conscious effort to limit Panarin, whose dynamic presence in a career season seems to yield positive results every time he steps on the ice, to shorter shifts and fewer minutes overall. It might require Laviolette to sit out some of his stars altogether with the bigger picture in mind.
It should certainly mean that Fox, seemingly benefiting from the unscheduled rest that came with missing 10 games due to injury in November and delivering some of the most effective play of his career over the past month, isn’t pushed too hard down the stretch.
Can the Rangers pull it off? Closing out a season with games that matter, but perhaps not more than the need to be fresh, healthy and ready for the battles to come, has always presented a challenge across all sports for teams headed for the playoffs. It’s a bit of a high-wire act for a coach, one that Laviolette now faces. How he proceeds could have profound implications for the Rangers’ road toward a championship – and just how long that road turns out to be.
