Boston vs. Montreal
How fortunate we are as hockey fans to have one of hockey’s great, most enduring and certainly most hate-filled rivalry as the centrepiece of the East’s second round. Boston and Montreal have been playing epic matches for decades, and both teams are well rested, coming off easy quarterfinal round victories. The stage is set, then, for a memorable series.
Boston dropped the first game of their opening series against Detroit, but didn’t look back from there, stoning the Red Wings in four straight to have a comfortable victory. The scary thing is that, apart from the first game, the Bruins looked incredibly lethal. I’ll go ahead and say it now, on current form, Boston are the best team in the East. Heck, they might even be the best team in the entire National Hockey League, but there’s a way to go to determine that.
For the Canadiens, it was a case of straight sets, recording a goodbye and goodnight 4-0 romp over Tampa Bay. The Lightning were never really in the series, and the quick victory for the Canadiens allowed them plenty of time to rest and recuperate. So much time, in fact, that they played an intra-club game recently to knock off the rust. They’ll need to be completely rust-free against their arch enemies.
The series is going to be a physical contest. Guys on both teams relish the contest. You’ve got antagonists like pesky Milan Lucic and arguably Montreal’s most polarising player, P.K. Subban, tall timber like Boston’s inspiration captain Zdeno Chara and the rising Canadiens star Max Pacioretty on the blue line, and more offensive talent up front on both teams than you can poke a stick at: Marchand, Briere, Vanek and Hamilton. There’s speed to burn on both sides, and it’s a mouth-watering contest.
Where I think the series will be won is in goal. Boston’s net-minder, Tuukka Rask, is arguably the best guy between the pipes at the moment. He was almost flawless against Boston, just like he’s been almost flawless since the first game of the regular season last October. It helps that Rask as a very good defensive corps in front of him, but that also detracts from how damn good he actually is. It’s been a highlight reel all year long, and he’s as impenetrable as a brick wall at times.
Opposing him will be Carey Price, a goalie who’s been oft-maligned in Montreal – the sometimes unreasonable expectations heaped on certain players in that city can border on insanity – and Price has, at times, struggled under the spotlight’s glare. Less and less frequently these days, though he wasn’t so good against Tampa, letting in ten goals in four games. But remember, this is the guy who backstopped Canada to Olympic gold in Sochi back in February. What’s more, he looked very good in the process.
The Canadiens are going to have to take their chances when they get them if they want a shot at causing what would be quite the upset. Power plays, odd-man rushes, good looks at even strength, they’re going to need to cash in at every opportunity, because Boston doesn’t give up goals easily.
Prediction: I don’t know that this one goes the seven games that we all want it to, at least not without some monumental games from the Canadiens, but the early part of the series will be close. Behind Rask, and with their offensive weapons firing, I see Boston pulling away to win it in six physically exhausting, fun-to-watch games.
Pittsburgh vs. New York Rangers
Fun fact: Rangers fourth-line grinder Dan Carcillo has more goals in the playoffs than Pittsburgh’s superstar Sidney Crosby. You know, the Canadian captain, the guy who is widely regarded as both the best player in the world, and the best player to play since Wayne Gretzky skated off into retirement.
As much as the narrative coming out of Pittsburgh is that they’re not concerned about Crosby’s failure to put the puck into the net in their last-round six-game win over Columbus, you’d have to be at least a little worried, given that Crosby is the lightning rod for so much of what the Penguins do offensively.
In looking a little scratchy, though, Crosby should not feel alone. The Penguins were somewhat lucky to advance against a plucky Columbus team that’s definitely on the rise. There wasn’t a time in the series where Pittsburgh really dominated. They simply did enough to get through to the second round, and although that’s all you need to do, I didn’t see much over the length of the series to think that Crosby and co could compete with, say, Boston.
Thankfully for the Penguins, their opponents, the New York Rangers, weren’t exactly setting the world on fire, either. It took them seven uneven games to get past the Philadelphia Flyers, in a maddening series for Blueshirt fans – like me – where the Rangers seemed to willingly cough up good leads and, other times, dominated long stretches of the contest without a goal, before giving one up.
New York’s best player is in net: Henrik Lundqvist. The King, as he’s affectionately known in Manhattan, is the guy who, more than any other, will likely determine the fate of the series. If he has a blinder, the Rangers are going to steal a game here or there, and if they get bounces in other games…well, you never know. Playoff hockey is a strange beast.
One thing is for certain: New York needs Rick Nash to get back into his late-season form. The two-time Olympic gold medallist didn’t register a goal in the Philadelphia series. He had five shots in Game 7, and rang it off the pipe once. ‘Snake-bitten’ is probably the best word to describe Nash right now. The Rangers need his productivity badly. In fact, they need goals and offensive hockey from all their big stars – particularly Nash, Brad Richards, Martin St Louis and Derek Stepan – up front if they’re going to have any shot at toppling the Penguins.
Pittsburgh are stacked offensively, and the worrying thing about Sidney Crosby having something of a below-par serious is that he’s going to explode, sooner rather than later, because that’s the sort of player he is. The Rangers will doubtless be hoping it doesn’t happen this series. Expect Dan Girardi and Marc Staal to blanket #87 whenever he’s on the ice. The problem is that there are other guys, like Evgeni Malkin, Chris Kunitz and James Neal who can do damage, even when Crosby doesn’t.
As Lundqvist is key for the Rangers, a lot of Pittsburgh’s fortunes ride with their own goalie, Marc Andre Fleury. When Fleury is good, he’s great. When he’s bad, Penguins coaches tend to hope that their defense is playing particularly inspired hockey. In his last start, Game Six against Columbus, Fleury was good, which is a good sign for the Penguins, who will doubtless hope that continues.
Prediction: I don’t like to admit this, but the Penguins have too much talent on the ice, and I think it’ll be too much for the Rangers to deal with. Crosby and co. should win it in six games, and set up an Eastern Conference Final between the two best teams in the East all season.
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