The Philadelphia Flyers and New York Rangers renew acquaintances on Thursday as they kick off their best-of-seven series at Madison Square Garden. The rivals split the four game regular season series, with the home team winning each game.
While home ice advantage has always been overrated in my opinion, but there may be something to the friendly confines when it comes to Rangers-Flyers. The blue shirts have taken eight straight games at MSG against their neighbors to the south.
Chalk it up to coincidence, but come playoff time every little advantage gets magnified. When you haven’t won in a certain place in a while it creeps in between your ears. Sticks are held a little tighter, the goal seems to shrink, the crowd gets a little louder and the puck seems to slide away from you a little faster.
Speaking of streaks that could possibly mean nothing when the series begins, the Flyers have won three straight playoff series against the Rangers. Most of the players from the current rosters weren’t around for these, but hey, hooray for stats!
Offense
The most dynamic offensive threat in this series is Claude Giroux. The Flyer’s captain has elevated his game to among the elite in the NHL. His lead has brought the most out of Wayne Simmonds, Jakub Voracek and Scott Hartnell. The Philadelphia offense is surprisingly deep, boasting seven 20-goal scorers, with four productive, aggressive lines.
The Rangers have struggled and sputtered and finally seem to have some cohesion on offense. They have only two players that have scored more than 20 goals, aside from Martin St. Louis 29 scored in Tampa Bay. On paper New York has talent, but it has yet to translate into consistently productive machine.
Defense
The Flyers have an underrated corps on defense that is good not great. The top pairing of Braydon Coburn and Kimmo Timmonen eat most of the minutes across the board and are well above average. There isn’t much of a drop off in the other two pairings (Mark Streit and Nicklas Grossman, Luke Schenn and Andrew MacDonald) where the Flyers have a nice combination of size and speed with each pairing.
New York has a significant separation from their top defensive pairing of Ryan McDonagh, Dan Girardi and then everyone else. Not that they are incompetent by any stretch of the imagination, but there is a drop off in consistency. Marc Staal can be an impact player, but has yet to develop into more of a two-way player. The same can be said for Anton Stralman, his partner, who is a smaller, Swedish version of Staal (one goal in 81 games). Raphael Diaz and Kevin Klein round out the blue line.
Goaltending
The most decisive advantage in the series is in goal where Philadelphia simply has no answer for Henrik Lundqvist in net. Steve Mason and Ray Emery have been better than advertised for the Flyers, but lack the pedigree of the Rangers’ iconic backstop.
Mason has been named the starter and posted his best numbers as a professional this year. The combination of Mason and the Flyers defense has dipped as the regular season dragged on, but it was the goaltending that helped pull Philadelphia out of their season-opening skid.
Mason won’t have to beat the Rangers by himself, but needs to be good enough to keep the Flyers in games with King Henrik at the other end of the ice.
Special Teams
The advantage has to go to the Flyers here as they ended the season in the top ten in both power play and penalty kill. Everything with the extra man begins and ends with Giroux who operates out of the left point position. Of Giroux’s 86 points scored, 37 came on the power play.
The Flyers employ an equally efficient penalty kill, which is particularly handy since they are the most penalized team in the NHL. Discipline is obviously key in the playoffs, but Philadelphia has shown that they can atone for most of their mental errors.
As good as the Flyers penalty kill has been, New York’s has been elite. They are only half a percent better than the Flyers but spend considerably less time in the penalty box. In addition to the rock solid shorthanded play, the Rangers are tied with Tampa and Anaheim for the lead in shorthanded goals among playoff teams.
The New York power play has been exactly average. The embarrassment of offensive riches for the Rangers has translated into a “too many chefs in the kitchen” scenario. Coach Alain Vigneault had assembled some deadly power play units in Vancouver, but has yet to find the right combination in New York.
So how does it end?
Given how these teams matched up in the regular season, there is no reason to believe that this series won’t go seven games. Even if one of these teams happens to win on enemy turf/ice, it is conceivable that the other will return serve in the opponent’s barn. I feel like the Flyers have all the tools to beat the Rangers in the seventh in “The World’s Most Famous Arena”. But they won’t. Too much desperation from New York’s hungry veterans will barely be enough. Look for an overtime, 3-2 Game 7 Rangers’ win.