Rangers Head Home Down Two
By Dalton Scantling on April 16, 2011 at 10:45 pm in Featured, Rangers
The New York Rangers are finally back home after starting the Stanley Cup Playoffs in Washington. While the Rangers weren’t in Washington for that long it probably felt like forever as their offense struggled mightily in the Nation’s Capital. While the Rangers are happy to be back playing in front of the home crowd they would prefer it was under different circumstances.
The Washington Capitals took each of the first two games in the series as the Rangers are still waiting for their offense to show up. Through two games in the series the Rangers have lit the lamp just once, on a goal by Matt Gilroy. They have taken 47 shots on Washington’s young goal tender, Michal Neuvirth, and he has stopped 46 of them. Along with 46 saves the Washington defense has blocked 53 shots.
While there is plenty for the Rangers to be frustrated about, they remain focused on fixing their offensive struggles. They don’t want to let the blocked shots get in their heads, and know they have to keep doing what has gotten them this far.
“We just need to have that mindset of bringing it to the net,” forward Brandon Dubinsky said Saturday. “Rather than cycling ourselves to death, we’ve just got to make sure we’re trying to create chances and funnel everything to the (crease) and trying to get in this guy’s face. He’s a young guy and we’ve got to try to put more pressure on him.”
The Rangers offense hasn’t just struggled during even strength play. Their power play has been nonexistent since the last nine games of the regular season. Since that time they have failed to produce on 30 of their 31 power-play chances. They know they have to get the power play group going and coach John Tortorella knows they need to change some things up.
“Let’s face it, it’s not working, and we’re going to try some different things,” Tortorella said. “Your power play is always a little microcosm of what your offense is. We’re struggling there. It can create momentum for you or hurt you.”
While the Rangers are a fairly young team, Captain Chris Drury is making sure his teammates don’t give up down two games. He says he has already talked to the team about their current situation and made sure the team knows the series is far from over.
“We already talked about that this morning,” Drury said, “one game and momentum shifts in a playoff series. They’re the number one seed, they have a ton of talent up front, on the back end, in net. They did their job at home, now it’s up to us to respond in the proper way and take care of things in our building.”
Both teams expect the crowd to be very loud in the beginning of the game, but it will be up to the Rangers to keep the crowd in the game. The Capitals are fully aware of what to expect in the first couple of minutes.
“They’re going to come out with a very strong effort, use the momentum, the energy of the crowd,” Capitals forward Mike Knuble said. “It will be absolutely crazy in there the first five, 10 minutes. It will be up to us to be as equally stingy and maybe try and take some of the momentum back by making them play in their own end.”
On the other side Chris Drury knows they need to feed off of the crowd noise. If they are able to get off to a strong start they will make the game much easier on themselves. Drury feels like the team is moving in the right direction.
“In Game 2 we played a better game, we played harder. We know we’re going to have to continue to grind it out. It would certainly be nice to get one early for our fans.”
The puck will drop around 3:00 PM ET in Madison Square Garden for game three of the best of seven series.
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