If you have heard it once, you have heard it 1,000 times, and if the Rangers can’t figure it out in Sunrise on Saturday while facing Game 6 extinction, you will hear it another 1,000 times this offseason alone.
You will be told that teams who are excessively dependent on their power play to generate production are not good bets in the playoffs. It will be delivered in an I-told-you-so tone.
And unless there is a reversal of fortune in Saturday’s Game 6, the Rangers — and that’s the hierarchy, the staff and the athletes — are not going to be able to say a word in rebuttal.
They are at the precipice following Thursday’s 3-2 Game 5 defeat at the Garden in which the Blueshirts were better than they had been in the previous two contests in Florida but were unable to close the deal against a team that’s been a little bit better in every category excluding goaltending.
Survival on Saturday isn’t going to be a question of will or commitment for the Rangers. It’s going to be a matter of execution. It also might be a matter of whether head coach Peter Laviolette has finally seen enough of the first unit’s travails to mix it up and give Alexis Lafreniere the promotion he is earning every game.
Lafreniere, in fact, scored his fourth goal in the past three games and eighth in his past 10 when he scored on a deflection in a six-on-five situation to bring his team back within 3-2 after the Panthers had previously scored an empty-netter.
No. 13 did wind up with a representative 18:09 of ice on a night that the Blueshirts leaned on about seven forwards for the final two periods, but Lafreniere had somehow been averaging 60 seconds less of five-on-five time in the playoffs as he received in the regular season. I’m not sure how that has happened.
The Rangers came out with some pep. They were able to advance the puck. They held their own physically. But awarded a power play at 4:31, the Blueshirts could not get on the board. Just over two minutes after Chris Kreider’s shorthanded goal gave his team a 1-0 lead at 2:04 of the second period, the Blueshirts had another power-play opportunity to extend the lead. They did not.
The Panthers tied the score at 8:21 of the second. The Rangers had a third power play at 6:58 of the third. They did nothing with it. About a minute-and-a-half later, the Puddy Tats assumed the lead at 10:22 when Anton Lundell beat Igor Shesterkin from the left circle on a counterattack.
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The power play represents the Rangers’ offensive identity. It gives them a strut in their step. It is comprised of their Marquee Five. The Panthers have reached into the Blueshirts’ chests and ripped their man-advantage heart out of them.
The Blueshirts are second-guessing themselves. They’re kept to the outside. Puck movement is deliberate. They can’t find shooting lanes. They are not retrieving the requisite number of pucks. Their entries are wonky. They’re not playing Washington anymore.
The Blueshirts are 1-for-14 in the series.
“I mean, you’re not going to score every time you go out there on the power play but I think you at least want to create momentum,” said Zibanejad, who played a combative game. “We’ve done that with some of the looks but I know we can be better.
“We’ll talk about it [Friday] and see what we can do.”
Hopefully, the coaching staff will talk about it and realize that throwing the same five guys on there again and again while expecting a different result is the definition of insanity. Unless doing so works, then it’s great coaching.
No. Lafreniere must be on the first power-play unit, or what are they doing?
The Rangers have scored one five-on-five goal over the past two games. That was Lafreniere’s deflection on Game 4’s third-period tying goal. Otherwise there was Vincent Trocheck’s PPG on Tuesday, and Kreider’s shorthanded score and Lafreniere’s six-on-five goal in this one.
Filip Chytil returned to the lineup after taking a seat for Game 4 in order to replenish. The Rangers have been one of the most buttoned-down teams in the league this year, it is anything but a risk-reward operation, yet they are playing a player in Chytil who is not anywhere close to 100 percent while needing to monitor him almost shift by shift.
Chytil started on the right with Kreider and Zibanejad, but he only got 2:57 in the second period and 3:00 in the third while the BFF’s were joined at different times by Jack Roslovic (oh boy), Artemi Panarin and Lafreniere. There is no stable second-six. The bottom-six is a jumble.
The Rangers still have just two goals from their defensemen in these playoffs, and both of them were shorthanded, one scored by K’Andre Miller and the other by Jacob Trouba.
Laviolette gave Matt Rempe just 2:43 of ice. Will Cuylle got 4:27 through the first two periods. A bench that is short enough absent the injured Jimmy Vesey became an afterthought. The Rangers will need a little bigger village to take on the Puddy Tats on Saturday.
It’s not going to be a question of will. It’s not going to be a question of commitment. It’s going to be a question of whether the Rangers can be better because they — and their power play — will have to be in order to bring this conference final back to Broadway for Game 7.