The Pittsburgh Penguins will have the opportunity to punch their ticket to the second round of the 2016 National Hockey League playoffs in front of their home fans when they host the New York Rangers for Game 5 of their playoff series on Saturday afternoon at Consol Energy Center. “And that’s painful, you know?” The Penguins manhandled NY at Madison Square Garden, winning the two games by a combined 8-1, and have won 17 of 20 contests dating to the regular season. If the Rangers are able to come off their 5-0 loss on Thursday, with a win in this round will give them a much needed confidence boost, that has the potential to be able to carry them through the next few games into the second round. That’s why GM Jim Rutherford is comfortable having him on the team – if Fleury hadn’t improved after those years of postseason collapses, he might actually be gone by now. Hagelin, a year ago, scored the Game 5 goal for New York York that eliminated Pittsburgh. The Penguins and Rangers continued to trade goals past the halfway mark as Dominic Moore scored for the Rangers, followed by Phil Kessel sniping one home. In 2014, they recovered and stunned Pittsburgh en route to an Eastern… “It was not a good feeling”.
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The Rangers got the start they wanted with early leads of 1-0 and 2-1 after coach Alain Vigneault shuffled his lineup, benching veteran Dan Boyle and Tanner Glass for Dan Girardi, who’d been out with injury, and Raphael Diaz.
The Blueshirts are wrinkled as they find themselves down 3-1 in the series with the possibility of elimination Saturday. “He does look pretty good in there right now”.
At one point, NY goalie Henrik Lundqvist had allowed four goals on 18 shots for the second straight game. When this team is at it’s best, they’re playing with their speed making room for their skill, not the other way around. The 39-year-old Cullen doubled the Penguins’ advantage just over four minutes later when Rust’s aggressive forechecking took two Rangers off the puck and left it sitting there for Cullen to whip over Lundqvist’s glove. Defenseman Trevor Daley faked a slap shot in the high slot only to throw a pass to Rust near the right post for his first career playoff goal at 5:21 of the second period. Sidney Crosby, Eric Fehr and Conor Sheary also scored as the Penguins knocked goaltender Henrik Lundqvist out early in the second period.
“The second period, it was feeling of embarrassment to give up that many goals”, Lundqvist said.
The talk today, the next few days and probably for parts of the summer will be about Henrik Lundqvist’s struggles in this series, that he is likely past his prime and the Rangers are about to head into a massive tailspin.
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The Rangers came back from 3-1 playoff deficits against the Penguins in 2014 and the Capitals in 2015, but there were no comeback this time as the Penguins improved to 5-2 all time against the Rangers in the postseason.
