New York Rangers vs Washington Capitals
What To Watch For
Who: The New York Rangers vs Washington Capitals
Where: The Verizon Center, Washington D.C.
When: Today at 5:00 pm
W2W4: It's game day in D.C. as #NYR face off w/ Capitals at 5:00; here's your game primer https://t.co/Xc3jA33o1G pic.twitter.com/wvTfo9nd2L
— New York Rangers (@NYRangers) January 17, 2016
Tale of the Tape
The New York Rangers enter Washington D.C. to take on the Capitals. This is the fourth of five meetings between the two teams this season. The Rangers make the trip to D.C. after their victory yesterday over the Philadelphia Flyers.
The Capitals seem to have first place all tied up in the Metropolitan division. They currently boast the most points, 69, in the NHL. However, they suffered an ugly loss to Buffalo on Saturday. In the process of losing to the Sabres 4-1, their goalie Braden Holtby, was pulled during the second period and it is unknown if he will start in goal this evening against the Rangers.
King Henrik has the day off for the Rangers. He played lights out yesterday, with 34 saves and no goals allowed during the shootout period against the Flyers. Lundqvist’s day off places Antti Raanta in between the pipes for the boys in blue.
D.C. has been on fire at home as of late. They welcome the Rangers to the Verizon Center with an 11 game winning streak at home on the line. This streak being the teams second longest home winning streak since they won 13 straight, which stretched form January 5 to March 6, 2010.
The Rangers and Capitals have a history of playing brutal, anxiety ridden games, not only in the regular season but in the playoffs as well. The Rangers usually handle themselves well when playing the Caps in the post season, taking playoff series from the Caps in 2012 and 2013.
The last time these teams met the Caps blew a 2 goal lead in the third period. D.C. was saved when Nicklas Backstrom scored with 5.7 seconds remaing in the game to take the contest to overtime where Ovechkin won the game with an overtime goal.
The New York Rangers will have to play well in order to steal a win from D.C. on the road. With every point carrying immense weight in an extremely close playoff race, this game may be considered a must win since the blue shirts have yet to beat the Caps this season. The Rangers have traded wins and losses their last nine games posting a record of 5-3-1 over that period. It is time for them to start a winning streak if they want to create space between them and the Flyers and that mentality can be seen through the teams play as of late.
The Blue Shirts have been playing better recently. Even though they lost on Thursday against the Islanders, the effort was visible and they beat a very good Flyers team in Philadelphia. Lundqvist has spoken to media claiming that the teams effort and desperation will be much more noticable now that teams are jockeying for playoff positions.
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If the Rangers can leave the nations capital with back-to-back wins against divisional rivals it can restore faith in the choices that Alain Vigneault has been making. The only line that AV has seemed satisfied with is the Rangers fourth line. Every other player has seemed to been moved back and forth with uncertainty.
Maybe after this weekend Vigneault will have a more clear picture in his head as to how he wants to continue the remainder of the season. Continuity and chemistry are crucial aspects to success and I do not see how you can expect to win when you constantly have different players in different lines every game.
Todays game will be very telling. The New York Rangers will have to make it past the Caps at some point in the post season if they have any aspirations of making a run at the cup. If they only take one of five regular season games from the Caps I do not see how they can enter the post season confidently with D.C. in their way.
However, in recent years it has not really mattered if the Caps were there or not. The New York Rangers seem to have the Capitals number in the playoffs and we all know winning the Presidents Cup is just a pat on the back if you cannot make it out of the conference playoff series.