Rangers playoff hopes get major boost with win over Buffalo and Boston loss (rangers)

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Rangers playoff hopes get major boost with win over Buffalo and Boston loss

By Jan Levine

Apr 26, 2021 • 9:50 am

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The Rangers' playoff hopes - on life support less than a week ago - have a bit more of a steady heartbeat following the weekend. Boston's 1-0 loss to Pittsburgh on Sunday coupled with New York's 6-3 win over Buffalo in a game that started shortly after the Penguins' contest concluded. With the Bruins loss and Rangers win, the gap, nce eight points, is now back down to four with Boston holding two games in hand and the two squads meeting for a pair of games to end the Blueshirts' regular season.

A few thoughts: 1) Mika, Mika, Mika:  just like last season, Mika is on a red-hot streak. This year, post-COVID after effects made him a shell of his usual self. But once he has gotten healthy, Zib has been the hottest player in the league. You just wish the season, like last year, would run a bit longer to give New York an even greater chance of making the postseason.

Rick Carpinello wrote:

Zibanejad had just three goals, eight assists in the first 27 games through March 15. Then came St. Patty’s Day against Philadelphia and a six-point game for Zibanejad in a runaway 9-0 Rangers win. Since then, well, we are seeing the real Zibanejad again.With Sunday's hat trick of the season in a 6-3 win over Buffalo, Zib now has 16 goals and 34 points in his past 22 games. The 16 goals lead the entire NHL since March 17, and he’s the only player in the league with three hat tricks this season.

2) Adam Fox: three more assists last night, including a beautiful, cross-ice, diagonal pass to Kaapo Kakko for his first goal of the game. The numbers below show just a portion of how good he has been, as that does not reflect his own zone play, which has improved.

3) Kakko: what a release on the first goal. Even better was the second goal, when he went to the dirty area to notch the tally. His wall work, aided by the muscle he put on during the pandemic mandated break last year, has really assisted him in that regard, since he is much, much stronger than when first drafted. You can see Kakko and Alexis Lafreniere growing daily, which bodes well for the future.

4) Defensive play: if there is one criticism, the own zone play was a bit weak yesterday. Missing Jacob Trouba has not aided that effort. But if New York really wants to make a run to get into the playoffs, cleaning up that play will be needed. Coach David Quinn recognizes this and mentioned it in his post-game press conference.

If we’re anything we’re entertaining,… Quinn said. “We’ve got to do a better job of managing a hockey game and understanding the score. It’s almost like the bigger lead we have the more risks we take. So we’ve got to do a better job learning how to manage leads, especially at this time of the year. That’s something we touched on at the end of the game and something we’re going to have to clean up moving forward.…

5) Schedule Boston faces Pittsburgh once more while New York takes on Buffalo. Following that game, Boston takes on Buffalo back-to-back while the Rangers get the Isles. The Bruins then have a pair of games versus the Devils and the Rangers get the Capitals. The B's then meet the Rangers twice - the final two regular season games for New York - and end their year with the Isles and Caps. The hope is that playoff seeding might matter for those two games and they put out a full effort. New York optimally would go into the games against Boston even or at worst, done by two points, meaning if they swept, the Bruins would have work to do to make the postseason.

In terms of tie-breakers, New York has 24 regulation+overtime wins while Boston has 23. The Rangers are 25-18-6 while the Bruins are 27-14-6. If the Rangers will catch the Bruins, the total number of wins likely will be even, making the ROW the key stat.

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