If there is one thing the New York Rangers hate having in the postseason, it's a series lead. Over the last 12 playoff games in which they've had a lead in the series, the Blueshirts have lost every one of them, and Tuesday night's display in Philadelphia very well could have been their worst in this dreadful stretch.
The Rangers came out flying in the first five minutes and then Benoit Pouliot, who has turned out to be an outstanding offseason acquisition, took a holding penalty and it was all downhill from there. Philadelphia manhandled the remaining 55 minutes of action en route to a 5-2 drubbing of New York.
The Rangers have not won a postseason series that has not gone the full seven games since 2008 when Sean Avery parked himself in front of Martin Brodeur's crease and the Rangers defeated the New Jersey Devils in five games in the first round.
Under the reign of a new head coach in Alain Vigneault and with the addition of another Stanley Cup winner in Martin St. Louis, the assumption the team would have a new mentality while on the precipice of ousting an opponent would be fair. But, no, the same old Rangers showed up. No sense of urgency. No killer instinct to take ownership of the series. Not one thing to say, "we're a game away from facing Pittsburgh in the second round, let's end this tonight."
To be fair, the Flyers played like their playoff lives depended on it, which they did. Steve Mason played his best game of the series in goal while Wayne Simmonds became the first player to score a hat trick against the Rangers in a playoff game since John Madden did in 2006 (which is still the only Rangers playoff game I have ever attended).
The Rangers were as flat as a bottle of soda that's been opened for two weeks. The power play, which has been an utter disaster in the second half of this series (I believe it's something like 0-for-the-century), was as bad as it's ever been. They couldn't win a faceoff in the offensive zone with the man advantage and resorted to mostly a dump-and-chase style of attack to which the Flyers basically laughed at sending the puck down the other end of the ice with each opportunity.
New York gave its fanbase absolutely no reason to believe they will come out on the winning end of Game 7.
But yet, these are the Rangers and they own the Flyers at Madison Square Garden (9-1 vs Philadelphia in their last ten games at the World's Most Famous Arena). The Rangers are also undefeated in Game 7s on home ice, including three Game 7 wins in the last two seasons.
To put it nicely, being a fan of the Rangers is....well....less than easy, simply because they never make things easy. But when their backs are against the wall and they are at home, they play their best. Perhaps now that Game 6 is now behind us a sense of (potentially false) hope has been restored. Puck drop is shortly after 7 PM ET Wednesday night. LGR.
Sometimes I rant, sometimes I come up with coherent thoughts.
