Image Copyright of the NHL
Last night the New York Rangers and the Washington Capitals played their final battle against each other for the chance to get the Cup, in a Game 7 tiebreaker. The Capitals, who had a rough start earlier this season, were finally out done by the New York Rangers in a 2-1 victory for the Rangers.
Since the game was the tiebreaker, the Rangers were not going to let their chance to win the cup slip from their fingers as Brad Richards scored the first goal of the game within a few minutes of the puck being dropped. The shots on goal were even in the first, but the Caps were not able to get through Rangers’ goaltender Henrik Lundqvist. In the second period shots were 11-12 in favor of the Rangers, but despite both teams efforts to score neither came out of the second period with a goal.
Going into the third and final period, the Rangers still had the upper hand with a one goal lead, which Del Zotto increased by scoring a second goal at the halfway mark. The Caps were right behind the Rangers as Roman Hamrlik tried to cut the Rangers lead in half by scoring the first goal for the Caps. Although the Caps finally got on the board, it just was not enough as the Rangers continued to outshoot the Caps 11-4 in the last period (31-23 in the entire game) and kept the Caps from scoring another goal.With the 2-1 win, the Rangers went on to win the second round series 4-3.
Tonight starts round 3 of the playoffs, the conference finals, with the top two Western teams, the Phoenix Coyotes and the La Kings meeting up for the first game of the next series. The Coyotes have been having a surprisingly good season this year and have already had a good playoff run by defeating the Nashville Predators and the Chicago Blackhawks. However, the Kings are the comeback story right now, since as the bottom seed they took out the top seed within five games and then swept the number 2 seeded team. With both these teams playing so well, the finals should be interesting, but if the Kings play they way they have been they might be able to knock out the 3rd seed as well.
The Rangers will go head to head against the New Jersey Devils tomorrow night in their first conference final match up. Both teams have solid defense with exceptional goaltenders. The Devils’ goalie Brodeur is playing as well as he did in his twenties, and Lundqvist is almost like a brick wall in front of the Rangers net, so it is going to take some tricky offensive moves to get pucks past either of them.
“I am a recent graduate of West Chester University of Pennsylvania.” How nice is that to say? Congrats DV. We’re stoked for you!
- Brian
I’m just seeing this comment now. It feels really weird and hasn’t really sunk in yet.