Here is a little fact those in pro sports don’t like to admit publicly and the leagues don’t want you to hear: Winning championships takes a considerable amount of luck.
And now, for the first time in a long time, it seems like the Rangers have it on their side.
First is the matchups. The Blueshirts were all but assured of the first wild-card spot in the Eastern Conference with almost two weeks left in the regular season. That enabled them to cross over to the Atlantic Division side of the tournament bracket, a far easier draw than the gauntlet of their own Metropolitan Division, where the Capitals and Penguins were Nos. 1 and 2 overall in the league and where they will now beat each other up in a second-round death match between Alex Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby.
Meanwhile, the Rangers were able to absorb a couple of body blows from the Canadiens in the first round, beating them in six games while showing Henrik Lundqvist is as good as ever at age 35, and the team in front of him can adapt to the opposition and still find ways to impose its speed and skill game.
It afforded them another favorable matchup in the second round, with Game 1 against the Senators set for Thursday night in Ottawa. The Rangers will finally return to the practice ice Tuesday and Wednesday before leaving for Canada’s capital, where waiting is a team that sneaked by the hobbled Bruins in the first round and whose best player, defenseman Erik Karlsson, just revealed he has been playing through a small fracture in his foot.
The Rangers just happen to be rolling with confidence and are as healthy as they’ve ever been. Because of their fortune in playoff seeding, integral players were able to sit down the stretch. Captain Ryan McDonagh sat for four games, and Rick Nash and Mats Zuccarello each sat for two. All three were dominant against the Habs.
Even the more serious injuries that happened in the regular season seemed to happen at opportune times — if such a thing is possible. First was the hip injury to Lundqvist, which sidelined him for almost three weeks in March. In what had already been an up-and-down year for Lundqvist, he still had enough time to fine-tune his game, and he was razor sharp as he outplayed Vezina Trophy finalist Carey Price throughout their six games.
Then there is veteran defenseman Dan Girardi, who missed almost all of March with a deep gash on his ankle, returning to play a first-round series that was a throwback to his days as a shutdown defender. Same can be said for Marc Staal, who suffered the third recorded concussion of his career in January, but has rediscovered the mean streak in his game.
The long summer after a first-round ouster at the hands of the Penguins last spring also allowed Girardi and Staal to recover fully from offseason ankle surgeries, and then actually gave them a proper amount of time to train before the grind of the regular season began. Some of the load on the back end has also been lifted with the trade-deadline acquisition of Brendan Smith, whose game has drastically elevated in the postseason, and who brings a much-needed edge, to go along with the rapid maturation of rookie Brady Skjei.
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So if the Rangers are able to get past the Senators, they will be getting what is likely going to be a tired and beat-up winner of Capitals-Penguins. Is Ovechkin’s knee really OK after that low hit from Nazim Kadri in the first round? Will the Penguins have terrific defenseman Kris Letang or regular starting goalie Matt Murray at 100 percent?
If one has the audacity to look out West, you’ll see the powerhouses of the conference all gone, with the Blackhawks getting swept in the first round, the Kings not making the playoffs and the Ducks the only team left out there with any experience to speak of.
And here are the Rangers, still with only one championship in the past 76 years. They’re still reeling from the 2014 Cup final and the two double-overtime losses. Same can be said for losing in Game 7 of the 2015 conference final against the Lightning, when McDonagh was playing on a broken foot and Zuccarello was out after having suffered a serious head injury in the first round.
Yet, just because things are set up for a team to make a run hardly means it’s going to happen. Luck may be on the side of the Rangers now more than ever, but it’s up to them to make it count.