The magic is over

The New York Rangers season is over.  They lost four games in a row for the first time this season, dropping the final four games of the series to the Tampa Bay Lightning.  It wasn’t a blowout with three of the four games decided by one goal (discounting empty net goals).  The Rangers were in the series until the last minute of the last game.  They should be proud of their effort and their fans have a lot to look forward to.

This game was like the last few games between these two teams.  Tampa had more offensive opportunities and stymied the Rangers’ offense.  The Blueshirts’ power play was their strength along with the goaltending of Igor Shesterkin.  The much hyped confrontation between Shesterkin and Andrei Vasilevskiy was everything it had been predicted to be.  Shesterkin was outstanding and had to make many more difficult stops, but Vasilevskiy was the shutdown playoff goalie that he has been for three years.

There will be a lot of time to dissect what went right and what went wrong in the playoffs.  While Coach Gerard Gallant didn’t want to talk about players, lines or lineup strategies, he made it clear that playing 20 games in 40 days took its toll.

A dejected Gallant said it was a factor. “We go seven, seven…no real breaks. I would have loved to get by tonight and get two days off, that would have been the first time…when you go seven and seven, there’s not much break and guys don’t get a chance to heal much.  It made it tough, but we battled hard, competed hard , did the best we could.”

When asked if fatigue affected the offense, he said “Definitely, definitely.”   When asked to elaborate, he did give credit to the Tampa defense. “They make it tough on you, they box you out really well…they do a good jobs.  Our forwards were trying to battle to get there, and it’s fatigue, there’s no doubt in my mind.”

But Mika Zibanejad discounted fatigue.  “There’s no fatigue. These are the games we want to play. I feel we get enough rest between the games.  No, it had nothing to do with fatigue.”

Trouba acknowledged the workload. “I would say guys got tired. It’s a lot of hockey in a short amount of time. It’s hard physical hockey, a lot of guys with some courageous efforts playing through some injuries, putting it on the line. Our guys were feeling it I’d say.”

Some may say that it’s just an excuse, but no team has had to play as many playoff games in so few days in 30 years.

Lineup questions

Gallant refused to answer any questions about his lineup changes.  He had restored Dryden Hunt to the lineup, replacing Kaapo Kakko who was a healthy scratch.  At first, Ryan Strome was not in the lineup, but at gametime he was in the lineup and that meant that Kakko had to sit.

It turned out that Strome was not 100% and played only 8:46 and was used sparingly in the second period before leaving for good at the end of the period.

The question that Gallant was not willing to address was why sit a healthy Kakko in favor of an ineffective Strome.  It was not a great way for Strome to end the season and very possibly his career as a Ranger as he heads to unrestricted free agency.

Even his scratching Kakko and replacing him with Hunt will be a question for Gallant considering that while Kakko has not lit up the scoreboard, he has been tenacious on the boards an a positive possession player.

The difference

The simple fact is that the Lightning are a better team when it comes to the war of attrition known as the Stanley Cup Playoffs.   They scored timely goals late in games, something the Rangers were unable to do.

The fact that Steven Stamkos was able to score the winning goal just 21 seconds after the Rangers had tied the game is the perfect example.

The Lightning are also veterans of defensive playoff hockey.  They know what it takes to win in the postseason and that is something that the Rangers got taught a hard lesson in.

But in the end it was a duel between two of the best netminders on the planet.  In a season when the Rangers relied perhaps too heavily on their goalie, they carried that over to the playoffs and it was in this round that Shesterkin met his match.

Injuries

Maybe now we will finally learn which Rangers were injured and how severely.  In 2015, we didn’t learn until after the team was eliminated that Ryan McDonagh had a broken foot, Dan Girardi had a bursa on his leg that required surgery, Marc Staal had a bone chip on his ankle that had to be removed, Derick Brassard had a wrist injury that needed surgery and Keith Yandle had a sprained shoulder. We knew Mats Zuccarello had an upper body injury, but we didn’t know it was a fractured skull.

The list for this Rangers team should be just as long if not longer.  We know about Strome, Lindgren, Goodrow, Chytil and Motte.  Who else was playing through a painful injury?

Post mortem

When a team loses in the playoffs it’s a depressing time for the players and their fans.  Jacob Trouba said that there was little be proud of, “Not a lot right now (to be proud of), take a couple days to reflect on things. It’s not easy…right now, not a good feeling.”

Chris Kreider just said that he felt “empty, obviously very sad.”

Mika Zibanejad  said that he was  “denying this right now, don’t have much to say.  It’s empty. Don’t want it to be over”

Adam Fox was more pragmatic, pointing out that the losses were mostly one-goal games and could have “gone either way.”  Fox reflected on the playoffs, “We could have been done in five games in the first round. We battled..there’ s a nice young mix of guys in the this room, but also a mix of older guys who help and lead the way for us.  It’s a great locker room and I think our battles when we were down in series..it was a lot of good experience, obviously we  wish for a better ending, but definitely promising for our team.”

The older players seemed to be taking it harder than young players in their first payoff dance like Fox. You can be sure that the other young players feel much like Fox and are taking this as a learning experience that they will benefit from in the future.  The older players who have been through this before have a completely different perspective.

We have a lot of time to analyze what happened in the last four games of this series. There were numerous turning points, but the simple fact is that by being forced to play seven games against Pittsburgh and Carolina forced the Rangers to climb a mountain they couldn’t scale.  14 teams have played two seven game series to start the playoffs and only two have made it past the Conference Finals.

Now, the attention will turn to the salary cap and what the Rangers need to do to prepare for next season. They face some real challenges and the lineup the Rangers featured in this game could be very different next October.

Here’s an extended video recap of the game: