By Larry Brooks
May 5, 2014
Goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury #29 of the Pittsburgh Penguins makes a pad save on a shot from Rick Nash #61 of the New York Rangers in the first period in Game Two of the Second Round of the 2014 NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs on May 4, 2014 at Consol Energy Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Jamie Sabau/Getty Images)
PITTSBURGH — The deeper into the Stanley Cup playoffs you get, the more the tournament becomes a best-on-best competition.
For Sunday night’s Game 2, the Penguins’ best players were dominant pretty much start to finish while only Henrik Lundqvist made a mark for the Rangers.
It was 3-0 for Pittsburgh in a game that somehow was only 1-0 until 16:30 of the third period — well, Lundqvist was how — as the Penguins tied the Eastern Conference semis that resume at the Garden on Monday in what will be the Rangers’ fifth game in seven nights.
But fatigue was neither the enemy nor the dispositive factor in this Game 2 in which the Blueshirts never were able to assert themselves and never able to seize momentum for more than a shift at a time, if that.
Sidney Crosby — oh, boy, what a game from an explosive No. 87, who did everything except score at about a million miles an hour — was the enemy and dispositive factor. So were Evgeni Malkin, Chris Kunitz, Marc-Andre Fleury, James Neal and Kris Letang; in other words, the Penguins’ marquee athletes.
The Rangers’ top guys — well, if it is too harsh to call them no-shows for Game 2, they were other than Lundqvist — were no factors whatsoever. Rick Nash continued to go scoreless in the playoffs despite manufacturing several chances. Derek Stepan and Marty St. Louis, Nash’s linemates on what is allegedly the Blueshirts’ top unit, had absolutely miserable games as their scoreless streaks reached six games apiece.
“It’s frustrating and it’s disappointing,” Nash, who has one goal in 21 playoff games as a Ranger, told The Post. “I got chances but that isn’t good enough.
“I have to up my game and work to put pucks in the net.”
“I have to up my game and work to put pucks in the net.”
Ryan McDonagh had yet another difficult night, struggling against speed; a half-step and a decision-making process behind. The McDonagh-Dan Girardi combination was under pressure all game and in the third, Rangers’ coach Alain Vigneault more often than not switched to the Marc Staal-Anton Stralman pair to match against the dynamic Crosby-Malkin-Kunitz line.
No forward played quite well enough in either the offensive zone or the neutral zone, the Rangers unable to get the puck consistently deep, and the Penguins therefore way too often off to the races … that they were able to win throughout, just as they were able to win a huge majority of puck battles when the Blueshirts were able to create them.
“They just played a little bit harder than we did,” said Brad Richards, who had more jump at the end than he did at the start, when the power play failed on three advantages within the opening 9:04. “We were able to match them a little bit but not for the game.”
The power play that features all of the best players was a killer. Even if it seems as if the Rangers haven’t scored a power-play goal since Bobby Rousseau played the point, the drought only — ha — dates back to Game 2 of the Flyers series, a stretch that encompasses 29 straight failures. They’re 3-for-37 in the tournament.
“The power play ultimately is my responsibility,” Vigneault said. “I have to find the right trigger points to make it work. I’m going to spend the night trying to figure it out.”
If not for Lundqvist’s brilliance, the game would have devolved into a rout by the middle of the match. If the Rangers couldn’t score five-on-four, then the goaltender wouldn’t allow the Penguins to score during what often seemed stretches of one-on-five. The King has rarely been better and never so this year. He is the one and only reason Crosby remains without a goal during the postseason.
The first one to get by Lundqvist came off the stick of Girardi at 10:26 of the second as he dived frantically to break up a pass from Letang for Kunitz on a rush down the right wing. The second came on a power play rebound with 3:30 to play in regulation with Derek Dorsett in the box after committing a mindless infraction.
The schedule is grueling and perhaps unfair. No matter. That’s the schedule. As Vigneault said when asked if fatigue had been a factor, “Did my goaltender look tired?”
The better question to ask is if Nash has been tired the entire postseason and whether his linemates have been tired since Game 2 of the Flyers series?
If this is now best-on-best, the Rangers’ top players had best make their presence known, and quickly.
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