So it is the Devils waiting on the Rangers or Caps. Kings-Coyotes in the West. Difference between this series and last year's is Richards. He was money well spent. The Capitals are better than last year's #1 seed who took down the Rangers in 5. Thats how much better the Rangers have become.
The great thing about this team too is the youth..go figure..the Rangers finally have a fantastic core of young players...and the NHL now has a CAP. After spending money like drunk sailors for years....now they will have to work hard to keep this group together. Of course, the Devils worry the fuck out of me....IF WE GET BY THE CAPS. Sorry for the F bomb but they do. The thing about the Devils and the Devil fans will take shots at me..but i really mean this as a compliment..but they are up to their old tricks again. The interference penalty that became the anti-devil.....along with the elimination of the two line pass stoppage...but the interference is back in the bag of tricks. Its not being called the way it used to. I guarantee that word will be used in this series. They are not as blatant with it as they were in their heyday but they find a way to make it very difficult to get anything going in their own zone..but just importantly...around center ice. The boring hockey is back...and its very very effective. While the Rangers are not exactly an offensive dream, the Rangers down low circle system is probably the most effective way of beating this team.
I take comfort in the fact that if we do play the Devils, they have a corpse between the pipes :breakdance:
lol...tough to get a read on ole Marty. Very tough to get a read on him during the Flyer series. But you do have to give them and him credit man. The Flyers just died it that series. It was like the Devils during there high point years ago. The center zone was impossible to get through. The was no space available once the Flyers got in to the offensive zone. Like HL in the last game against the Caps, the opportunities were rare but he did make some great saves in the series. They just dominated them and took the fight out of them. That game 5...it was if they had no heart left at all. With all the wild hair and beards and physical ugliness the Flyers posses, we saw that too when we played them this year on several occasions. No heart. Getting back to game 6...yeah..you watch this game differently than a game 3 or especially the pressure of that game 5 because you have an out....but boy oh boy...it would be huge to get this over with Wednesday night.
Devils are more than "get a lead and sit on it" they continue to possess the puck, incredible forecheck and PK, and play sound defense. I would expect an incredibly close and chippy series vs the Rangers, Devils in 7. The trap has been around forever there are ways of beating it. Devils have been good at cycling the puck and creating quality chances. Although they have been clogging up the neutral zone during third period leads that's looked a lot like their "trap era" shit.
Oh..i wasnt saying that Jake...i mean look what they did to the Flyers when there were down 1-0 and responded with 4 3rd period goals. They do have the ability to score..no doubt.
http://forums.theganggreen.com/showthread.php?t=72323 vbetting How are the Capitals better? They're on a nice run here but they had a poor season and I don't see how the talent improved.
My fellow Ranger brethren: Let's Go Rangers...bomp, bomp, bomp, bomp, bomp....Let's Go Rangers...bomp, bomp, bomp, bomp, bomp....
Flyers were a joke. No defense, no goaltending. Panthers were nothing special either. The Devils have had two fairly easy matchups so far. We got Ottawa who the Rangers matched up terribly with and the Caps who are brutal to play against. Very good defense, solid goaltending, dangerous offensive weapons. They're almost a clone of the Rangers. I'm not saying that the Devils will be easy (if the Rangers get there), but they don't scare me at all.
For just once, I would like to watch a Rangers post season victory where I am not on the verge of a heart atack or stroke.
They play playoff hockey finally. That had worse than a poor season, it was brutal, but they turned it on down the stretch and to a next level once the playoffs started. Talent has improved to a point where the guys who should play good, are playing good in the playoffs. Last year Backstrom and Semin disappeared. Everyone did but Ovechkin. And lets not forget Holtby.
"We want to close it out. We want to get this over with. It's a lot easier said than done, but we want to have the mindset we are as desperate as they are. We have to bring that right into the first shift, and try to get this over with right away. We have to have that mentality."-Brad Richards
