Sens - Rangers: Round Two Preview

Here's another preview:
http://www.espn.com/nhl/story/_/id/19228158/2017-stanley-cup-preview-ottawa-senators-vs-new-york-rangers

However:

Anderson's ability to play the puck is an advantage because the defensemen don't need to come back as deep into the zone to retrieve the puck, and it helps the transition game.

-- Joe McDonald, ESPN staff writer

This is gonna be heart attack inducing

I think this will be an easier series to be honest.

Sens went 4-0 against the Bruins, all close games (1 goal, or 2 with an empty-netter). Rangers went 3-0 with two 5-2 scores. Bruins then had half their D and Krejci go down and it took us 6 games and 3 OT wins to advance.

Are you sure this will be an easier series?

just a feeling. Nothing that happened in round 1 matters now. Anderson is a beast against NYR

Ev wrote:just a feeling. Nothing that happened in round 1 matters now. Anderson is a beast against NYR

Have we not had success against Lundqvist overall, too?

SeawaySensFan wrote:

Ev wrote:just a feeling. Nothing that happened in round 1 matters now. Anderson is a beast against NYR

Have we not had success against Lundqvist overall, too?

Exactly. I'm with you two. The Sens have been successful against NYR and their goalie. They have a great shot at this. Aside from Toronto, the two teams I thought we stacked up against best are Boston and NYR. This playoffs is going exactly according to plan. Muhahahahahaha

Sens also had success against Price. Something like 7 of 9 games getting 4+ goals. And then we played them 3 times in a space of a little over one week (i.e. similar to a playoff round) and could not get much past him).

Prior success is not necessarily indicative of future results. But it helps to give the players confidence. As does winning the series against Boston -- injuries and all. Not only do they have more playoff experience, but they also have recent winning experience (yes, I know, same thing for the Rangers, but they had more of it to begin with so this is a bigger change for the Sens). Also the current coaching staff, while having lots of experience themselves, had nothing to draw on w.r.t. most of the lineup. They had no idea who can do what in playoffs. Now they do. Case in point, Ryan had 12:27 ice time in game 1 (0:59 on the PP) and in game 2 that went up to 16:40 (3:07). Brassard went from 14:17 (0:37) to 18:19 (3:13). It's not just ice time and PP time, it's more than that, but the ice time was the easiest to demonstrate.

Ev wrote:I think this will be an easier series to be honest.

Difficult to say.   Real depth on NY, not as much on boston.

Does anyone wants tickets? Selling two tickets in 319 Row A. Face value is 165 each but would sell for less . Let me know

PTFlea wrote:

Ev wrote:I think this will be an easier series to be honest.

Difficult to say.   Real depth on NY, not as much on boston.

NYR has good speed. If the Sens can play their defensive system well and clog up the NZ, I think they'll match up well.

Decent preview here:
http://blueseatblogs.com/2017/04/24/rangers-vs-senators-systems-preview/

In his first year with the Senators, Boucher has the Sens running a 1-1-3 forecheck, which can be an aggressive forecheck or a neutral zone trap depending on the puck’s location, the score, how much time is left on the clock, etc. When Claude Julien used something similar last series, it gave the Rangers fits, most notably in Game Three.

Finally, someone who watches games and doesn't just read the 1-3-1 dreck.

Not sure I agree with this:

The Senators, outside of Karlsson, do not have strong depth on the blue line. Speed and skill will kill the Senators, especially on the cycle. Moving their feet, getting pucks on net, and crashing the net will be critical for the Rangers. Like against the Habs, the Rangers have a matchup advantage with their bottom-six against the bottom pairing for the Sens.

I think they may be short-selling some of our guys because of their proximity to Karlsson -- hard to look good playing next to that. They are also forgetting that Karlsson is on almost every other shift.

Also, have they ever seen Claesson and Harpur or are they still thinking back to the Boro days?

I agree with a lot of what was said in the comments, as well. The Rangers *are* a better team, at least they were on paper, in the regular season. Yet the Senators won the season series 2-1, with the only loss coming with Condon in goal. It's true that Lundqvist had a bad regular season and that he has played much better in the Montreal series. But can he continue delivering .947 SV% when his career post-season average is .923 (to say nothing of the fact that he's not a spring chicken any more)?

Meanwhile, Anderson had a very good season, especially considering the off-ice situation, and while he was so-so in the first couple games he improved as he went along, finishing up with a .921 SV%. Over the last 4 games (including the one where he gave up 3 after being spotted a 3-0 lead) his SV% is .929, which is close to his career average of .931.

I have more confidence in Anderson staying around that .930 mark than Lundqvist maintaining .947. For their full careers, despite playing on some very poor defensive teams (all of them, until this year, really) Anderson has a better SV% (.931 vs. .923). Despite Anderson being almost a year older, his body has taken a lot less of a beating both over the whole career and, especially, this year.

I'm not going to say that the Sens have a clear edge in goal -- that would be silly -- but there are enough little edges to make me think there is very little clear advantage either way.

NYR has the edge in goal. Lundqvist is better and has more playoff experience. But I don't think it's a significant edge. I think the Rags and Sens match up very well against one another. Both teams are more than capable of winning this series.

In the regular season both the Rangers and Senators gave up 30.1 shots per game. From an analytics point of view, Borowiecki certainly wasn't our worst, but I believe his numbers were skewed (in the positive direction) by playing with Wideman, who had our best analytics. Well, he did, until Claesson came in. Claesson has played 33 games, so you can't really say the sample size is too small. His analytics are right up there with Wideman, and in most cases slightly better.

On the year, only 3 Ottawa defensemen had a positive shot-attempt differential (shot attempts include both blocked and unblocked shots, so it's not the full picture). They were Wideman, Claesson and Harpur. The more Harpur and Claesson play the less we will see of Phaneuf and Ceci (because they aren't taking away Karlsson's ice time). And the more they play like they have already, the more Boucher/Crawford will trust them. I honestly think that Phaneuf-Ceci can be a very effective pairing, provided that their ice time and match-ups are managed appropriately. Phaneuf, in particular, can be very effective but he should not play more than 18 minutes.

All that to say that our playoff defensive corps is very different from what we had in the regular season. And given that our shots against per game (in the playoffs) are the lowest of all teams still playing (only Minnesota gave up fewer shots per game). Meanwhile the Rangers have gone the other way, giving up 3 more shots per game in the last 6 games than they did in the previous 82.

Of course the Rangers were playing the pesky Habs while the Sens were playing the injury-riddled Bruins. Still, the Rangers will need to rely on Lundqvist repeating what he did against Montreal (which is unlikely) than the Sens will on Anderson simply performing around his career average.

DefenceWinsChampionships wrote:NYR has the edge in goal. Lundqvist is better and has more playoff experience. But I don't think it's a significant edge. I think the Rags and Sens match up very well against one another. Both teams are more than capable of winning this series.

He has more experience, for sure. He also has a lot more wear-and-tear, especially this year. Anderson is fresh as a daisy.

Anderson has played on some poor defensive teams (his playoff shots against per game is 35.5, versus 29.6 for Lundqvist). Over his career his playoff SV% is actually better than Henrik's. While I think it's true that in many cases a higher SV% correlates with higher shot counts (i.e. the narrative that Anderson likes to see a lot of rubber) I still think that we have a slight advantage based on shots given up and saves made.

I think I'm slowly convincing myself the Sens will sweep.

I think the Rangers are going to split up Stepan and Zuc, where Zuc plays with Hayes on a default third line. I read that somewhere that it was due to be changed up, which presents different issues for Ottawa obviously.

As for the series itself, I don't think this could be much closer. The offense is very close, with the addition of MacArthur and a seemingly healthier Ryan making the depth a wash IMO. The keys, as always, are if your big guns can get some support. Smith, Pageau, Stalberg, Burrows will all be keys to the series in terms of not only containing NY, but also chipping in offensively.

I'd call the offense even, maybe slightly favouring Ottawa.

The defence is Ottawa IMO. McDonagh is amazing, obviously, Girardi is nothing special at all and will likely be walked more than once. Holden has looked good from what I've seen (which is not much really), Staal is a tire fire and their third pairing is ok. Meanwhile, even Ottawa's foot soldiers on D are positives in Wideman, Harper, Boro and Claesson. Those are two legit 3rd pairings right there, mostly mobile, some toughness, definitely some offence.

Advantage Ottawa.

Goaltending is clearly NY until Anderson dethrones Lundqvist - and even then, ones a HOF goalie, one is not

Advantage NY

Coaching: We'll soon find out if AV can adapt to a really frustrating system implemented by Boucher and conversely, we'll see if Boucher can avoid using too much of the trap and lulling ourselves to sleep as well. AV is one of the better coaches out there IMO.

Advantage NY (barely).

So:

Offense: EVEN
Defence: Ottawa
Goaltending: NY
Coaching: NY

So...even as the day is long. Which PP will show up for Ottawa? The one that almost blew Game 6 by missing glorious chances, or the one that ENDED Game 6? If they continue to miss opportunities, it'll be their downfall, if they can connect at the 21% they were connecting at - then it'll be advantage Ottawa.

Remember when the Rangers came out at the start of the season with guns blazing, scoring 4+ goals per game and being without question the best team in the league? Is this the same team that boasts *on* 4-point player in a 6 game series? What the heck happened?

Their PP was 0 for 14 prior to finally getting on in G6. It wasn't great in the regular season but it seems to have regressed.

Kreider had 1 assist (it was a big one but, really, he was taking a shot and it was deflected wide and found Zibanejad, so a bit lucky).

The greatest scoring chance differential of all 8 series was Montreal with something like 30. Ottawa was second with 11! In other words the Rangers were pretty much blown out of the water by the Smurfs and Lundqvist is the only reason they are still playing.

I don't think he can keep this up. Not to that level.