A strong second period and great goaltending helped the Pittsburgh Penguins surge past the New York Rangers in five games, eliminating the Rangers and moving on to round two of the playoffs.
The Penguins and Rangers have met in the postseason for each of the last three years. In those first two years, the Rangers eliminated the Penguins. This year, the tables had turned.
Five different players scored for Pittsburgh and all but three forwards picked up points during a 6-3 rout of the Rangers in game five. That would be good enough to eliminate the Rangers and move on to the second round.
Fast starts have characterized this series and game five was no exception. Just 1:02 into the game, Rick Nash put his New York Rangers on the board on just the first shot of the game – a deflection on a Dan Girardi shot that wobbled through Matt Murray.
The Pittsburgh Penguins were wholly dominant in game four, but the Rangers brought the momentum early today. The visitors sustained pressure around the Pittsburgh net almost from the first puck drop, clearly playing for their lives.
The Penguins finally tied things up, thanks to Carl Hagelin‘s first goal against the team that drafted him. It wasn’t pretty, but a goal’s a goal.
Only 45 seconds later, Viktor Stalberg gave the Rangers their lead back. The puck looked like it may have bounced off Patric Hornqvist‘s stick and past Murray.
So. It was going to be one of those games.
The Penguins got a powerplay chance as Rangers rookie Brady Skjei boarded Eric Fehr. The Pens began to get their skates under them as they started to look like the same team that showed up last game. Phil Kessel rocketed the puck past Henrik Lundqvist, tying things back up.
The rest of the game began to get right back into the swing of the series, too. Penalties piled up as Evgeni Malkin was called for tripping (debatable) – just after that penalty was killed, Kris Letang and Nash took matching slashing penalties.
Each side saw a few good chances on the four-on-four but the game stayed tied at two. Following the players’ return, though, the Penguins really started flying. Though the Rangers ended the period outshooting the Pens, the slow start hadn’t had many obvious negative effects.
Just over five minutes into the second period, the Penguins nabbed their first lead of the game. At first look it seemed like Bryan Rust brilliantly redirected a point shot by Trevor Daley, outwaiting a sprawling Lundqvist. From a different angle, you could see just how perfectly planned and executed it was – Daley’s shot was more of a pass and Rust knew exactly where he was going to put it.
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That’s Rust’s first postseason goal and it couldn’t have come at a better time.
The floodgate had been opened and there was no stopping the boys in black and gold now. With just less than ten minutes remaining in the second period, Matt Cullen widened the gap and gave the Pens a 4-2 lead.
The Penguins are most successful when all of their lines are contributing, and that’s certainly the case today. Part of me still can’t believe our third line is Phil Kessel – Nick Bonino – Carl Hagelin, but part of me is absolutely thrilled that we have the kind of depth that makes that possible.
Dominic Moore prolonged the Rangers’ misery by taking a roughing penalty soon after. The Pens’ powerplay has been one of the strongest points of their game recently, with three PPG scored in game four and one today, up to this point.
This one wasn’t particularly strong, but you can’t win ’em all.
The Rangers then took their turn on the man-advantage as Conor Sheary was sent to the box for high-sticking Lundqvist. It didn’t seem intentional, as the Ranger defending him tied him up, but hey – a decapitation attempt is a decapitation attempt, and rules are rules.
The crowd had gotten into it and the team had gotten into it – almost as soon as Sheary escaped the box, he charged up the ice with Sidney Crosby, who sent him a pass in the slot. With the puck, Sheary charged in all but unchallenged and flipped it past “The King.”
Perhaps this game would have been more appropriately called a clinic, because the Pens were putting on a show. Malkin picked up the puck after a Rangers’ misplay and leisurely headed up ice along with Rust. Malkin dished the pass across the ice to him, and Rust scored his second of the game, giving the Penguins a four-goal second period.
Antti Raanta took over in net for the start of the third period, hoping to spark a miraculous comeback for the Blueshirts. Relatedly, Lundqvist has been chased from net (albeit once for an injury) three out of five games this series.
Murray of all players took a penalty for tripping and Kessel served it for him. Rangers’ Raphael Diaz launched several shots on net and finally one went through thanks to a Chris Kreider deflection, bringing the Rangers up to only a three-goal deficit. The Rangers outshot the Penguins 9-1 up to this point in the period, and the play had somewhat regressed back to how it had been early on.
We’ve seen this happen before: the Pens surge to a sizable lead, then sit back a little and play on their heels. That’s very dangerous, especially in a game of this magnitude.
On the (kind of) bright side, every one of the Rangers’ three goals in this game had been deflected, so there wasn’t much more Murray could do to stop them than he did. Coming from a former goalie, it’s hard to track something that small and fast in the first place, let alone when there’s a bunch of people in front of you and it abruptly changes course.
Murray, in fact, stood on his head several times as the clock ticked down. The Rangers actually could have staged a comeback, based on how much the tables had turned between the second and third periods – Murray kept that from happening.
I swear I haven’t seen a clock move this slowly since my awful pre-calc class back in high school. The Rangers continued to pressure the Pens, who had much fewer chances in this period than the previous one.
The comeback was not to be, luckily for us Pens fans and not so much for the Rangers. Their strong play throughout the second had given the team a big enough buffer to let off the gas a little bit – though again, they can’t expect to win like that down the road.
The Penguins moved on to the second round with a decisive victory. This postseason presented a hugely different result than the previous two years when the Pens met the Rangers, and that’s thanks to an effort by the whole team and front office.
Each of the players who scored – Hagelin, Kessel, Rust twice, Cullen, and Sheary – had not been with the Penguins last season. Other players who made major impacts in this series, like Tom Kuhnhackl, Daley, and Bonino, are also newcomers to the team.
This was supposed to be a rebuilding year, but look where we are now: the puzzle pieces are fitting together and this team is almost unstoppable.
Next: Penguins: Mike Sullivan vs. Dan Bylsma
We may see the Washington Capitals in the next round; we may see the Philadelphia Flyers. No matter which rival we match up against, they should be very scared.