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The Pittsburgh Penguisn will attempt to take a strangle hold on their 2nd round serives vs the New York Rangers tonight in Madison Square Garden. A victory tonight would force the Rangers into winning 3 games in a row, an unlikely feat given how close the two teams are on paper.
What can the Penguins do to give themselves a better chance to win tonight?
Don’t push your luck with Fleury
Marc Andre Fleury is having his best postseason since 2007-2008. His numbers are very good and he has given the Penguins a chance to win on mostly every single night. Fleury is the first Penguins goalie to have back to back shutouts in the playoffs, he is the first Penguins goalie to have 2 shutouts in a single series. It is not realistic to expect him to continue on the torrid pace he has played at the past 2 games. The Rangers are going to score more goals in this series, how many is the question.
The problem is that in Game 3 the Penguins were lucky, Marc Andre Fleury stole the game. The Rangers were the better team. Over time this will catch up with a team. The Penguins cannot consistently ask Fleury to steal games, it’s not realistic to ask any goalie in this era to do so, it’s not realistic to ask a goalie who has had a larger sample size of failure in the playoffs to do so.
The Penguisn need to get back to how they played the first 2 games of the series where they owned the puck. Limit the amount of rubber being thrown at Fleury and in turn that limits the probability of a lucky deflection or bounce going in your own net.
Penalties
Stop taking them. The Penguins have taken way too many penalties in this postseason. Pittsburgh is tied with the LA Kings with the most amount of penalties taken so far in this postseason (40). While the Rangers power play has been terrible (0 for last 34) it did show signs of life last game. I don’t think it will be much longer until the Rangers crack through on the power play. The Penguins cannot consistently take penalties or it will eventually burn them.
The Rangers have taken 8 penalties this series, the Penguins 13. Pittsburgh has controlled most of the even strength play in this series, they have to be more disciplined.
More from Niskanen and Maatta
Given Rob Scuderi’s struggles and the fact that Robert Bortuzzo is not a top 4 defenseman, it is up to these two players to play at a high level. Most of the playoffs they have, but in Game 3 they had a really poor game. Letang and Martin are carrying the heavy load for the Penguins and doing it quite well, the Penguins 2nd pairing has to take advantage of the work Martin and Letang are doing.
In game 3 Niskanen had a CF% at even strength of 43.3% and Maatta was at 42.9%. That is not good enough and it is a far cry from where both of those players have been so far in the playoffs. Niskanen is at 54.1% and Maatta is at 54.9% overall for the playoffs.
Those guys are much better than what they were in Game 3. If this pairing can start to drive possession again it will limit the Rangers opportunities and things should operate smoothly given how Fleury has played so far.
Thanks for reading!
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