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Breaking down the Penguins and Rangers series

May 2, 2022, 2:43 PM ET [55 Comments]
Ryan Wilson
Pittsburgh Penguins Blogger • RSSArchiveCONTACT
We are one day away from the Pittsburgh Penguins and New York Rangers kicking off their round one series at Madison Square Garden. The regular season saw the Rangers take three out of the four games the teams played with Pittsburgh’s lone win coming in a 1-0 victory. Both teams get a fresh start and as we know this league is fickle and sometimes you get the bounces and sometimes you don’t.

Heading into the series I am inclined to believe the Rangers are the favorites heading in. It has less to do with the prior matchups in the regular season and more to do with the current goaltending situations. The Rangers have the best goalie in the world in Igor Shesterkin. The Penguins will be starting their backup, Casey DeSmith. While DeSmith has rebounded a bit from a horrid start to the year he isn’t Shesterkin and assuming the Rangers netminder doesn’t lay an egg it is hard to see how the Penguins have the edge at the most important position on the ice. However, we all know the volatility of the goaltender position and how random it can feel. There is certainly a path where Casey DeSmith outplays Igor Shesterkin. We see crazy things like this every year in the postseason. It just isn’t likely.

Both teams have players who can fill the net. Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Jake Guentzel, Bryan Rust, Artemi Panarin, Chris Kreider, and Mika Zibanejad are accomplished goal scorers. Chris Kreider was the most prolific this year scoring an amazing 52 goals. He had a what I would consider a very Kevin Stevenseque season. He will be handful.

Kris Letang and Adam Fox lead the way for each team on defense. They are both high quality players Fox had 74 points while Kris Letang set a career high at 68 points. Both teams have a secondary offensive option in their defense. Jacob Trouba had 39 points while Mike Matheson chipped in with 31 points in split time on the top pairing.

These teams aren’t entirely far off from one another. Especially, when you consider the Rangers are improved from earlier in the season when they were being carried by their goaltending. Here’s a snapshot of each team for the entire season



Holistically the Penguins have been the better team. Surprisingly, the teams are really close in what many would consider the Rangers best attribute, their goaltending. This of course was accomplished predominately with the work of Tristan Jarry who is currently unavailable to start the series. The full year stats aren’t as useful because the teams made moves at the trade deadline and aren’t the same teams they were for most of the year. There are also injuries to take into consideration.

Since the trade deadline the Rangers have closed the gap. Here are the numbers from March 22nd to now:



The Rangers are way better at controlling the flow of play which was a weakness earlier in the year. I was very surprised to see the Penguins with the significantly better goaltending numbers, but I’m certainly not heading into this series thinking this is the reality of the situation. Shesterkin has a very large sample of being great. Casey DeSmith’s NHL sample says he is a competent backup goaltender.

The other thing that stands out is the Rangers ability to shut down high-danger chances. This is usually an area of strength for Pittsburgh. The Rangers figuring out how to limit high-danger chances has the potential to being very problematic. This only gets worse for the Penguins if Shesterkin is on his game. Among goalies with 1,000 minutes played at 5v5 Shesterkin is 3rd best in the league with an HDSV% of .867. Casey DeSmith is 44th at .806.

The Penguins are without Tristan Jarry. They are also without Jason Zucker. He is not a game breaker by any stretch, but he is a quality player who was going through some bad luck this year. The Penguins can’t afford to be missing someone like him in the lineup. They need all hands on deck for their depth to slot competitively. Here is what the Penguins lines look like without Zucker today at practice.




The top six is still functional. Danton Heinen was third on the team in 5v5 goals at 15. He showed an ability to chip in offensively without needing the power play. Rickard Rakell was a great addition and really helps the depth. Even with both of those players doing their part you can see the bottom six is underwhelming. It gives me a 2013-14 vibe. Jeff Carter and Kasperi Kapanen together is certainly a choice. They have both struggled mightily to this point. Scoring some playoff goals will make a lot of people forget the regular season.

There is some good news. It does look like Jason Zucker will be a possibility to join the team at some point this series




Brian Dumoulin will be used as a top pairing player. Can he keep up? The last couple of months have suggested he can’t. He’ll have to dig deep. You can’t hide mistakes in the playoffs.

Here is the Rangers lineup:




If Alexis Lafreniere and Kaapo Kakko were playing to their draft position the Penguins wouldn’t have a chance. Both players have underperformed considering their 1st and 2nd overall positions. Lafreniere had a much better sophomore season than his rookie, but when you draft #1 overall you’d like to see a little bit more than what has come so far.

The Rangers had four players skating with the fourth line. It will be Ryan Reaves who draws into the lineup



I think this is a good thing for the Penguins. The teams who commit to skating have looked really fast compared to the Penguins. Voluntarily playing unskilled forwards who don’t skate well isn’t the route I would take to go at the Penguins.

The New York Rangers did a lot of damage on the power play this season. They finished third overall with a 24.5% success rate. There is no shortage of PP1 talent for the Rangers. They will give the Penguins all they can handle here. Pittsburgh was good in their own right on the kill. They finished third overall at 84.4% success rate. Tristan Jarry was a big part of the success, though.

If you flip things the Rangers are an 82.3% penalty killing team. The Penguins power play, despite its talent, was only 19th in the league at 20.2%. As it stands the Rangers have a special teams advantage. Although, Crosby, Malkin, Guentzel, Rust, and Letang are immensely talented and if they can find a groove they can score in bunches.

I think there are paths for both teams to take the series. It isn’t lopsided. There are a number of similarities. The big difference in the moment is the goaltending matchup and because of it I am leaning towards the Rangers taking the series.

Will this be the last series we see Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, and Kris Letang together? I sure hope not. We’ll find out soon enough.

Thanks for reading!
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