Rangers at Canadiens
The New York Rangers owned the league's best record away from home and carried that success into their opening game of the postseason. Fresh off a 2-0 victory behind netminder Henrik Lundqvist, the Rangers look to take command of their Eastern Conference first-round series when they visit the Montreal Canadiens in Game 2 on Friday night.
Although the Canadiens won all three regular-season meetings, New York wrested home-ice advantage with a 2-0 victory Tuesday, continuing a pattern of success that saw the Rangers post an NHL-leading 27 road wins. It also extended New York's string of postseason success in Montreal with its sixth victory in the last seven meetings. While some media outlets are already labeled Friday's game a must-win for the Canadiens to avoid heading back to New York in an 0-2 hole, goaltender Carey Price was not ready to sound the alarm. “It’s just one game,” Price said. “It’s a seven-game series and we weren’t going to win 16 straight games. We would have liked to. You know, we got what we got and we’re going to move forward."
TV: 7 p.m. ET, USA, MSG (New York), CBC, TVAS (Montreal)
ABOUT THE RANGERS: It's not often Lundqvist when is considered the "other" goalie in any series, but his regular-season mark of 4-9-2 with a 3.97 goals-against average at Bell Centre and the presence of Price had many observers tilting the odds in Montreal's favor. "We didn't put out there that Hank is going to have a hard time here," New York coach Alain Vigneault said. "We've always had a lot of confidence in his game and what he did (Wednesday) was what we expected." Lundqvist registered 31 saves for his 10th shutout in the postseason, which are the most among active netminders.
ABOUT THE CANADIENS: The inability to dent Lundqvist revived memories of Montreal's six-game loss to Tampa Bay in the conference semifinals two years ago, when the Canadiens scored five goals in their four losses. Coach Claude Julien said there would be no lineup changes following Wednesday's practice, which focused on players setting up screens and working on deflections and rebounds. "There were a couple of chances where we got pucks to the net and rebounds were sitting there," captain Max Pacioretty said. "We've got to dig a little bit deeper to come up with those type of chances."
OVERTIME
1. Rangers F Tanner Glass scored the decisive goal in the opener, matching his total from his previous 60 playoff games.
2. Montreal killed off all four penalties in Game 1 and has snuffed out 17 straight in the past nine games.
3. Lundqvist is 3-0-0 with a 2.01 goals-against average in his last four playoff appearances at Bell Centre.