All season long, Henrik Lundqvist has been money as the New York Rangers’ goaltender, and at key points during the first 2 ½ rounds of the playoffs he’s been the same. But Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Finals against the New Jersey Devils was not one of those times. Lundqvist was positively awful as the Devils won 5-3 and took a 3-2 lead in games.
I love Martin Brodeur. I know, if you read through the commentary on the NHL playoffs I’ve made more negative than positive comments about the New Jersey goaltender, but that’s not out of spite, just that the numbers say he’s far from the goalie he once was. But even as a Boston fan he’s a goalie I root for and I absolutely love a night like Monday when, in a must-win spot, he wakes up the echoes of his younger days, turns back 28 of 29 shots and helps his team beat the New York Rangers 4-1 and tie up the NHL’s Eastern Conference Finals at two games apiece.
The New Jersey Devils did everything they could between the goaltenders on Saturday afternoon. But the New York Rangers had the best man between the pipes and it’s that reason alone that gave them a 3-0 win in Game 3 of the NHL’s Eastern Conference Finals.
The Los Angeles Kings moved to within a game of sweeping of the NHL’s Western Conference Finals with a 2-1 win last night in Phoenix. The Coyotes came out and played hard, even got a brief lead, but in the end there’s too much talent on Los Angeles for this series to turn around.
It took two periods for the action to start, but the New York Rangers broke through first in the third period of Game 1 in the NHL’s Eastern Conference Finals, scoring early in the third to break a scoreless tie, in the middle of the period to give themselves a strong cushion and at the […]