NHL Notebook: The Rangers are a formidable foe - and should be Boston’s preferred 1st-round matchup

On paper, the Rangers are exactly the type of foe that should strike fear into any team intertwined with them over a seven-game series.

On a New York power play that has cashed in on 26 percent of their opportunities, Gerard Gallant has a lethal arsenal at his disposal — capable of making even the stoutest PK units wilt.

Boxford’s own Chris Kreider has scored 26 goals on the man advantage this season. The Arizona Coyotes, as an entire TEAM, have 26 power-play goals.

But beyond Kreider and his 51 total tallies, the Rangers can turn to the reigning Norris Trophy winner in Adam Fox up along the blue line, or Mika Zibanejad and his lethal one-timer down low. And don’t forget about Artemi Panarin, who signed a seven-year, $81.5 million contract back in 2019 and has subsequently racked up 249 points in just 184 games with the Blueshirts.

But beyond New York’s power play and its big guns up front, Chris Drury’s efforts to bolster his team’s depth chart at the deadline have also yielded strong returns — with Andrew Copp looking like a natural fit with his new club (eight goals, 18 points in 15 games).

And of course, even with a very young D corps, the Rangers have been buoyed all season long by a netminder in Igor Shesterkin who, at the very least, will be taking home the Vezina Trophy in the next few months — if not the Hart Trophy as league MVP.

Even if New York’s power play was pedestrian, a locked-in Shesterkin alone would cause trepidation for any team that ends up drawing the Rangers in the opening round of the postseason.

In a daunting playoff bracket inundated with clubs wielding plenty of firepower (but fallible goaltending) Shesterkin and his sterling numbers (.936 save percentage) stands as a looming leviathan — capable of winning a series outright by standing like a brick wall between the pipes.

But for Bruce Cassidy’s Bruins, a seven-game bout against a brick wall like Shesterkin still might be the lesser of far too many evils when it comes to charting Boston’s easiest path out of the first round.

Of course, some of that additional confidence might be a byproduct of Boston’s 3-1 victory over New York on Saturday afternoon.

For the first time in a long time, the TD Garden crowd paid witness to a Bruins team operating at full strength. And the results … *surprise, surprise* … were pretty damn good.

While the bread and butter of Boston’s gameplan (low-event hockey and keeping opponents outside of Grade-A ice) was carried out once again against the Rangers, the B’s were also bolstered by the return of David Pastrnak, Hampus Lindholm and Linus Ullmark — each of whom made sizable contributions in all three areas of the ice.

“A little bit of different energy in the room,” Cassidy said of Lindholm, Pastrnak, and Ullmark returning. “We saw it with Hampus early with the transition plays and Pasta with the finish and other plays. Listen, they’re very good NHL players — elite, you can say — so it’s going to make a difference in your lineup.” 

Of course, there’s still plenty of room for improvement, with continued reps for Pastrnak standing as the best way for Boston to revive a power play stuck in an 0-for-32 drought. 

But a game like Saturday once again offered some optimism that the B’s have the defensive structure and enough high-end skill to hang with just about anyone in the NHL.

And even though facing off against a netminder like Shesterkin could lead to an awful lot of low-scoring, 2-1 contests in a playoff series — those would seem to be the contests that the B’s prefer to play, rather than the O-zone track meets that would be on the horizon if the Bruins had to play, say, Toronto or Florida.

“They don’t give you a whole lot, you’ve got to earn it. We earned it a lot more in the third period,” Gallant said of Boston. “First two periods, we tried to create a little too much, turned some pucks over.”

For all of the talk regarding their elite power play, Shesterkin’s status as a postseason trump card and New York’s strong finish to the regular season (7-2-1 in their last 10 games), the Rangers are mortal at 5v5 action … which, conveniently, is the realm where most of a game is played.

As we saw back in February at Madison Square Garden, if the Bruins can stay out of the sin bin, they stand a good chance of hanging with the Rangers throughout a contest — even if Shesterkin stands as an imposing final line of defense.

It’s no easy task when it comes to solving Shesterkin, but dealing with that headache sure seems like the easier route than trudging through the meat grinder that is the Atlantic Division.

The Bruins will have their hands full if New York is their first-round foe, but Boston would likely welcome a postseason path through the Metro Division — especially if that means the Maple Leafs and Lightning are kicking the snot out of each other in their opening series (and Florida potentially saddled with a bruising Capitals club).

Of course, a whole lot can change between now and the end of the week, when these series are finally set in stone.  

As of right now, Carolina would stand as Boston’s first-round opponent, with the Rangers needing to make up ground in order to leapfrog the Canes and secure the Metro crown. 

Granted, with Frederik Andersen still sidelined with a lower-body injury, Carolina may be more mortal than many Bruins fans expect — although Carolina’s fast-paced style of play still seems like a less-than-favorable matchup. 

But Boston will also need to continue to accrue points over this final week, or else risk the possibility of losing ground to the Caps and falling into the second Wild-Card spot — setting up a meeting with the Panthers.

And yes — Florida, much like New York, has some flaws. But man, the Cats just seem like a team you don’t want to scrap with right now (13 straight wins, 4.17 goals per game).

With just a few games left, there’s still plenty that has yet to be determined — especially when it comes to where the Bruins will be playing on May 2.

If Saturday’s meeting was any indication, the B’s are likely hoping for just a quick jaunt to the Big Apple.

“It’s way better to play these kind of teams than to play against guys who are out of the playoffs, who are playing free and not scared to make a mistake,” Pastrnak said. “So sometimes it’s tougher to play those guys than the guys who are actually in the playoffs and getting ready for playoff hockey. I think I like it more when you play [playoff] teams. It’s a good team that we beat today.”

OTHER NOTES

Brad Marchand is no stranger to some on-ice theatrics. 

Be it the series of dekes and dangles in his O-zone arsenal or his willingness to embrace a WWF heel persona given his sandpaper style of play, Marchand has served as a polarizing figure in the league for years now.

But for all of his showmanship, the 33-year-old winger still has a bit of an old-school mindset — at least when it comes to the next wave of NHL talent.  

For as much as the NHL has reaped the rewards from uber-skilled talents like Trevor Zegras and their propensity to stock league highlight reels full of lacrosse-style tallies, gravity-defying apples and supreme edge work — some of the NHL’s old guard doth protest. 

Look no further than Coyotes forward Jay Beagle, who cross-checked Zegras and then promptly pummelled Troy Terry in the closing minutes of a 5-0 Ducks win earlier this month.

Beagle’s actions drew plenty of criticism, along with Coyotes broadcaster Tyson Nash’s comments that if Zegras and Terry want "to embarrass guys, you want to skill it up, you better be prepared to get punched in the mouth."

While Marchand noted that young players such as Zegras and their exploits are an essential part of growing the game and reaching the next generation, he did agree with some of the sentiment regarding the place of those kinds of plays in today’s NHL. 

"You have to respect Zegras' abilities,” Marchand said in Pittsburgh on Thursday afternoon. “But he's still, he has to understand what happens ... like that Jay Beagle situation, the reason that Terry got beat up is because of Zegras. When you do that, you're showboating against other teams — someone at some point is going to take liberty on you, there's still enough guys around the league that will do that. 

"And there's a place for it, for sure. I think it does grow the game. You see the publicity that those goals got around the league this year. Definitely, kids are trying it. My kids are trying it — those plays, and the one where Pasta goes between his legs, stuff like that. That's what kids love. And that's great to grow the game. 

“But I don't necessarily think that's the type of player you win with in playoffs. I think you still, there's something to be said about being hard and being a reliable player. So that's all great in the regular season, but I don't think you see a whole lot of that in playoff time. And that's what good teams want to build for. So kids — make sure you don't just rely on that stuff. It's fun, but there's a lot more to the game.”

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For most Bruins fans, the mention of Guy Lafleur often brings up plenty of pained memories — especially as it pertains to one specific call on the ice (and the subsequent power-play goal) back on May 10, 1979.

Still, amid all of the misery that the legendary winger and those ‘70s Habs teams doled out against Boston over the years, all of that ill will fell to the wayside in wake of the Lafleur’s passing at the age of 70 earlier this week.

Ahead of Boston’s matchup against the Rangers on Saturday, the Bruins held a moment of silence for Lafleur — with the Montreal legend even receiving some cheers in Boston’s barn for his contributions to the game. 

Count Cassidy, a Bruins fan from an early age while growing up in Ottawa, among the many who looked beyond Lafleur’s track record as a B’s opponent and appreciated what he brought to the ice for close to two decades.

“Terrific hockey player, seemed to have a great personality,” Cassidy said of Lafleur. “Great flair for that market. I see a guy like Pasta, he reminds me a bit of Guy Lafleur — he kind of marches to the beat of his own drum, smile on his face every day, a creative hockey player, big shot down the wing, a goal scorer that comes through. 

“I think a modern-day (version) ... I hate to do that, compare him to a Montreal Canadian. But Guy Lafleur to me was a great hockey player — just happened to be wearing a sweater of the team I didn't support. . But at the end of the day, I loved the way he played the game. That line with (Jacques) Lemaire was like Bergy — could shoot the puck off the wing. That was a hell of a line to watch play hockey."

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In some exciting news, this marks the first year in which yours truly will have a say in the PHWA voting for the 2022 NHL Awards. Looking forward to sharing my full ballot with you all and my rationale behind my selections once the hardware is finally handed out. 

I’ve already made my case for Patrice Bergeron’s record-breaking fifth Selke Trophy, but there are plenty of other debates to dissect when it comes to dishing out various other awards in the coming weeks. Looking forward to chatting it up with all of you very soon. 

Stats and graphs via Natural Stat Trick, HockeyViz and JFreshHockey.