Game Four Recap (Rangers 3, Penguins 0)

I'm of two minds about Thursday night's loss. Actually, I'm not. I wish it wouldn't have happened, despite the fact that I'll be at Game Five, and will be hoping to see a handshake line firsthand.

I hate to see the team lose a potential elimination game. The '91 and '92 Cup teams never lost when they had a chance to put somebody out. But maybe I need to broaden my frame of reference. I mean, is there any more playoff-savvy team right now than the San Antonio Spurs? They lost an elimination game earlier this week. And there are good losses-- the kind of losses that can remind a team that they're not going to be able to win on sheer talent alone night in and night out, that you're not always going to get the favorable bounce and that you've got to make your own luck by force of effort. Truth is, these Rangers games have been really close by most measures, with the Penguins winning the first three games because their special teams were significantly better, their goaltending was discernibly better and their puck-possession style was wearing out the Rangers, who often looked too old and small up front and too passive on the blueline. I'm still not convinced that any Rangers line other than the Jagr line can hurt the Penguins offensively, but if they can continue to shut down the Penguins' lines, it won't take much more than Jagr for the Rangers to make it into a series.

On Thursday George Vecsey wrote glowingly of Crosby and Malkin in The New York Times:

This rave is not merely about hockey. This is about talent, the kind of chemical reaction that happens when two potent forces are mixed together. Martin and Lewis. Torvill and Dean. Nuclear fusion. Something that wasn’t there before.

...

Right now, the Penguins are a pleasure to watch, the way they control a power play, flitting the puck back and forth with their teammates, wearing down the Rangers, a child’s game of keep away being performed in public, in the Rangers’ building, as they say in hockey.

...

Crosby is the verbal Canadian and Malkin is the more silent Russian, still learning the languages of the N.H.L., but they are equals when they join forces on a power play.

They bring back memories of the great young dynasty in Edmonton in the early ’80s, when Wayne Gretzky would tantalize with his otherworldly touch and Mark Messier would intimidate with his power and intensity. And then Glen Sather would throw them together on a power play, ice and fire, the dawning of a new age.

...

When they play together with a man advantage, they are downright pretty to watch, with their hipper-dipper moves, the control of the puck with their sticks, the alert passes, the crisp reversals of direction, often slightly quicker than their opponents, with little bursts of skill and intelligence, superiority coming out, breaking down the home team in front of despairing fans.

And he's right about the power play Tao. I was with the crowd who wasn't sure whether a power play with both Crosby and Malkin would work. You can't have two primary puck-possessors; if there's two guys on the ice who want to be the quarterback, it's not going to work. The Penguins gave away Sergei Zubov in his prime back in 1995 in exchange for a bunch of beads shaped like a late-career Kevin Hatcher, allegedly because #66 couldn't truck with his hogging the puck on the power play. But Crosby and Malkin have made it work. Crosby doesn't seem to mind letting Malkin be the primary puckcarrier, which frees Crosby up to get open for shots or to be the best decoy going.

What's funny about hockey is that some nights it all works swimmingly, like on Tuesday night when the Penguins scored that fantastic power play goal at the close of the second period which broke the Rangers' back. They possessed the puck in the Rangers' zone for long enough to wear out the penalty killers through patient, repeated lateral passes and waited for the opportune moment to strike. Two nights later, the entire team was off the mark. Their power play was out of sync right off the bat, when two early opportunities could have sucked the life out of the corwd and the Rangers if converted. At even strength, the passing lanes were clogged and Crosby was baited into turning over the puck several times. I thought that the longer the game remained scoreless, the better the Penguins' chance would be to steal another game by withstanding the storm. Even when Jagr scored his Jerry Maguire goal, I thought there was a better than even chance it wouldn't hold up as the winner. But when, a few minutes later, Malkin was hauled down on a breakaway and had to settle for the consolation penalty shot, I knew the moment he missed on his inexplicable slow-mo shot that something was awry, and we'd have to wait for Game Five.