The New York Rangers did not fall into many undesirable situations in which their backs were against the wall during the 2011-12 regular season campaign, but they've certainly had their fair share here in the postseason. They faced elimination in Games 6 and 7 against the Ottawa Senators in the quarterfinals and ended up winning both to advance. They then were forced to Game 7 against the Washington Capitals in the semifinals the round after, and now will face elimination for a fourth time tonight in Game 6 against the New Jersey Devils, and again in Game 7 on Sunday if the series reaches that point. It's been a heck of a ride for these Blueshirts up until now, that's for sure.
The way in which they've gotten this far has been nothing short of magical. You go back and look at how they were able to bounce back against the Senators to win two straight after losing back-to-back bummers where they were heavily outplayed. You go back and look at how they defeated the Capitals in triple overtime in Game 3 of round two, and then would pull off a 6.6 second comeback in Game 5 to eventually win in overtime to take the series lead. Yo go back and look at how rookie Chris Kreider led the team to victory in the series opener against the Devils, and Henrik Lundqvist's superhuman performance in Game 3. The list goes on and on.
But, at some point, you have to begin to wonder if the Rangers' will eventually run out of magic tricks and have the show end as a result. They need two more wins in order to make it to the Stanley Cup Finals, and that's two more wins without a loss mixed in. This team is in a life or death situation for the fourth time in these playoffs beginning tonight, and they are going to be forced to fight harder than they ever have if they wish to survive and continue their postseason journey.
Based on their past experience, there is no questioning whether or not such a feat is possible to accomplish for New York. They've done it before and there's no doubting that they can do it again. But the problem now becomes the fatigue factor, and the physical and mental draining that three consecutive elongated playoff series can have on a rather young group of guys. Granted the Devils didn't have a cake walk getting to this point either, but they are the much deeper team with more energy right now. Will they finally be the squad to put a halt on the resilient Rangers?
I honestly do not believe the Devils will be the ones to determine that; the Rangers will. For 40-45 minutes Wednesday night in Game 5, the Rangers dominated play. They owned the puck, the grinded the Devils down with their forecheck and they were the much more alert hockey club. Unfortunately it was the 15-20 minutes that they didn't play as such that ended up costing them the game. But even still, their effort to come back from a 0-3 deficit drew some confidence and character out of the team.
They are going to need a repeat effort tonight and Sunday night if this season is going as far as the Stanley Cup Finals, and they need it to repeat for the full sixty minutes - something they haven't been able to do all series long. They're going to need some more of that distinctive 'Ranger Magic' of theirs to be able to pull this out and defy all odds yet again. They can only hope that they have not already used it all up in the prior rounds.
But, as we've been saying since April, there's only one thing to do at the end of the day: Believe.
I enjoy nothing more than writing these pump-up blogs on gameday, by the way. Just thought I'd share.
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