Thursday, April 26, 2012

The Rangers Advance

The New York Rangers got by Ottawa in game seven of their Eastern Conference first round game:
Rangers defensemen Marc Staal and Dan Girardi scored 4:18 apart in the second period, Henrik Lundqvist made 26 saves and top-seeded New York eliminated the pesky eighth-seeded Ottawa Senators from the playoffs with a 2-1 victory in Game 7 on Thursday night.
Staal broke the scoreless deadlock, and Girardi gave the Rangers a 2-0 lead with his first career NHL playoff goal. Lundqvist allowed Daniel Alfredsson's power-play goal in the second but stood tall the rest of the way to send the Rangers into an Eastern Conference second-round matchup with the seventh-seeded Washington Capitals.
The Rangers hadn't hosted a Game 7 since their Stanley Cup victory over Vancouver in 1994, but they stayed perfect at home in deciding games - winning their fourth. New York is 4-5 overall in Game 7, and the Senators dropped to 0-5.
Lundqvist withstood tons of pressure from the Senators, who spent most of the closing 5 minutes in the Rangers' end.
The win wasn't secure until Sergei Gonchar tripped Carl Hagelin as he skated toward the empty net with 36.2 seconds remaining.
So the Rangers are the only Original Six team to advance to the second round, and Canada adds another year to the national Stanley Cup drought. Maybe next year.

2 comments:

  1. This one's easy. There will be NO team from Canada to win the Stanley Cup until the CBC fires Don Cherry (and the rest of the Cherry wannabes.) Because the man chooses to cheer for all the wrong things, teams that follow his 'advice' turn out to be like the Maple Leafs—unbelievably awful.

    I am cheering for the Preds this year.

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  2. After seeing Don Cherry all decked out for Burns Day, I can appreciate you passionate hatred of the man.

    http://ca.sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nhl-puck-daddy/saturday-three-stars-lee-stempniak-somehow-tallies-hat-072543059.html

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