Today the New York Rangers will start their push to etch their name in glory as they will play game 1 of the Stanley Cup Playoffs today at 3pm against the Washington Capitals. With a historic regular season behind them, seeing the Rangers win the Metropolitan Division, the Eastern Conference and winning the Presidents Trophy with the best record in the entire league where they finished 55-23-4. Not only being the best team in the league this year backed by stellar goaltending by both Igor Shesterkin and Johnathan Quick, this Rangers team is also arguably one of the best constructed teams in the history of the franchise where they were able to set a franchise high in wins and points (114) all being led by Artemi Panarin. This year Panarin put up a complete career year for the Rangers finishing with 49 goals and 71 assists for 120 points, which is also the Rangers second highest point scorer in a season for the Blueshirts second to Jaromir Jagr when he set the record back in 2005-06 with 123 points. Next to Panarin, the Rangers had 5 other players end up with 50+ points, those being Vincent Trocheck, Chris Kreider, Adam Fox, Mika Zibanjead and Alexis Lafrenière. While the Rangers will look to rely on Panarin and Trocheck, the depth of the team is what needs come up big during this playoff run as 4 full lines being able to work at their full efficiency as they have the entire season is a big key in going for their 5th Stanley Cup and become the 9th team to win the Presidents Trophy and the Stanley Cup in the same year.
For their opponents, the Washington Capitals just squeaked into the playoffs and are viewed as massive underdogs against the Rangers coming into this series, however the Capitals should never be underestimated. The Caps are led by Alex Ovechkin who is always a threat and even at his age is someone that the Rangers should not take lightly, and alongside Dylan Strome, John Carlson and Tom Wilson the Capitals still have the power to strike some fear into their opponents. Yet it isn’t by scoring a lot that the Caps found themselves in the playoffs this year and their goal differential this season, -37, will attest to that, but instead it was by winning the important one goal games. The Capitals have a completely much better record in these one goal games going 20-2-11 in such games, while multi goal lead games saw a losing record of 20-29-0 in such games so the Caps would like to keep all the games in this run to just one goal. Along with a very strong defensive game, the Capitals will be looking to Charlie Lindgren to keep them in games when all else fails and with the way Lindgren has come into the number one starter role for the Caps this year, he certainly has the chance to steal a game or 2 for the Capitals this postseason. When it comes to how this series should go, everyone would expect for the Presidents Trophy winners to knock out the very last team to make the playoffs but as we look to Boston vs Florida last season, upsets are always a possibility. However in this case it should be a pretty cut and dry conclusion, the Rangers have a much better team on paper and with 5 players with more points than the Capitals leading scorer, this series should come easy to the Blueshirts. Look for the Rangers to win in 5 games.