It wasn’t supposed to be like this, a cruise for the final two weeks — even if the Rangers had been cruising in their self-made malaise for closer to six weeks. But just as all that uncertainty hovered at the start of this soft-transition year for the organization, so it does again as the new season is upon us.
With Sunday night’s meaningless 3-2 win over the Penguins at the Garden representing the finale of this 82-game grind, the Rangers (48-28-6, 102 points) can now officially focus on their first-round matchup with the Canadiens, which will begin Wednesday at 7 p.m. in Montreal. That will be a different animal, a different challenge for this group that should be commended for coming together to achieve a seventh straight playoff berth.
But the commendations stop now. The Rangers’ accomplishments are officially in the past, and what is in front of them is only tangentially related. They know that as well as anyone.
“Come [Monday] morning, what happened so far for each and every player, the page is turned,” coach Alain Vigneault said Sunday night. “Everybody has a clean slate.”
So, just as it did seven months ago, the question arises again of who the Rangers really are, and how they will react under more pressure and tighter spaces.
The most unstable leg of the table is still the defense, and Vigneault has a big decision to make for the Game 1 lineup. Who on the right side is going to sit: Dan Girardi, Kevin Klein, or Nick Holden?
“I’m not sharing that with you,” Vigneault said about his overall postseason lineup, “but I’ve got a pretty good idea.”
It’s very difficult to think Vigneault would sit Girardi, whose best moments in a bounce-back year — which isn’t saying much — have come alongside rejuvenated captain Ryan McDonagh. A more steady year from Marc Staal hit a peak mid-season when skating with Holden on the right, but over the past month or so, Holden has struggled mightily while Klein hasn’t been much better.
It’s been a terrific rookie campaign for lefty blueliner Brady Skjei, who has only gotten better as the season has gone on. If he’s alongside newcomer Brendan Smith — or anyone else for that matter — it should be hard for Vigneault to play him less than 20 minutes a night.
As for the offense, it was impossible to predict how all of the new pieces were going to meld. Trading away Derick Brassard for Mika Zibanejad was a financial move that also got the team younger. Zibanejad showed his ability with early-season success, but after missing two months with a broken leg, has struggled to regain the same level since returning on Jan. 17. Whereas Brassard lived for the postseason, it’s to be seen if the same can be said about Zibanejad.
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As for the maturation of young guns J.T. Miller, Chris Kreider and Kevin Hayes, all had good regular seasons. Yet the bad Miller has resurfaced as of late, making the type of decisions with the puck that lose playoff games. Hayes’ game has leveled off, and Kreider still disappears for entire stretches. (That game in Ottawa on Saturday was also meaningless, but, as one might say, did you see Chris?)
Of course, the ghosts of postseasons past still reside with Rick Nash, and a successful exorcism would be, well, head-turning indeed.
If there was one stable factor going into the regular season, it was the decade-long bedrock in goal, but Henrik Lundqvist went through a very strange, stop-and-start, up-and-down season. Following an almost three-week absence due to a hip injury, he has recently worked his way back into form over the past few starts — and numbers be damned if you’ve been masochistic enough to watch the split-squad rosters try to play defense in front of him.
So thinking back to September would be to think of another time altogether for these Rangers. Very quickly, expectations went from very low to very high.
But now begins a new season, and once again, the Rangers are faced with a glut of uncertainty. If they surprised with their success to this point, realize they’re going to have to prove themselves all over again.