Penguins-Rangers: Pittsburgh's Weapons End New York's Season

Last season it was the Rangers who ended Marian Hossa's season when he played with the Atlanta Thrashers. Today it was Hossa who ended the Rangers’ cup hopes.

Skating down center ice, Hossa scooped up a puck which bounced off Dan Girardi's skate and put it past Henrik Lundqvist high on his glove side to end this second-round series. It also ended an admirable comeback attempt by a team which went into the third period down 2-0. But the Rangers were lucky just to have gotten to overtime as they were out-skated, out-played, and overmatched.

Coming into this game the Rangers had to play disciplined hockey and stay out of the penalty box. But apparently Michal Rozsival didn't get that message as he took his first of three cheap penalties, which lead to Hossa's first goal to put the Pens up 1-0.

The Pens took a 2-0 lead a few minutes later when Evgeni Malkin schooled the Ranger defense in puck-handling skills. Malkin was able to score even after a pair of weak hits spun him around but failed to knock him to the ice.

In the third period, the Rangers came in with their backs to the wall, but got a couple of big contributions from unexpected players. Lauri Korpikoski scored off a nasty wrist shot to beat Marc-Andre Fleury to get the Rangers back into the game 2-1. Korpikoski's goal was the first of his career coming in his NHL debut.

The goal seemed to energize the Rangers as less than a minute and a half later, Nigel Dawes received a great pass from Scott Gomez and scored on his backhand to tie the game at two. For possibly the first time during the game, the Blueshirts looked liked the better team, but that wouldn't last.

“It wasn’t the best feeling after being ahead 2-0, to give up two goals and go to overtime, but it was important to get it together mentally,” Malkin said through an interpreter. “We went to the locker room (before the overtime) and everybody had a great feeling.”

Throughout the rest of regulation both teams seemed to sit back on their heels not executing on offense. Late in the third the Rangers made things harder on themselves when Chris Drury received a four-minute double minor, which carried over into overtime.

That set the tone for OT as it looked like it was more of the second period as the Pens out shot the Rangers 6-0 before Hossa's goal sent his team to the last round before the cup.

“Sid was driving hard to the net and it kind of bounced off him and the puck just came up to me, and I just tried to shoot at the net—and it was a lucky one,” Hossa said.

The Rangers lost this game because the Penguins were everything they were not.

They played a fast-paced game and were able to control the Rangers with their strong defense. Lundqvist was faced 40 shots and only managed to stop 37 of them, meanwhile Fleury was only forced to face 22 shots. Jagr had no shots, Brandon Shanahan had just three, and Drury only had one.

In contrast, the Rangers’ defense failed to cover Pittsburgh's weapons. Sidney Crosby, who had a pair of assists, picked up three shots, Hossa had five, and they had nothing against Malkin, who had 10 shots on net.

The Rangers also exhausted themselves, killing penalties that gave the Penguins six opportunities. Over a 67-minute game, they spend 14 minutes killing penalties.

“We got ourselves into trouble again with penalties and there were some momentum swings because of that,” Renney said. “We were unable to manage that. It’s disappointing.” 

When Hossa scored on the power play in the second, it seemed to affect the Rangers in a major way as they spend the rest of the game trying to comeback and ultimately never could.

This article originally appeared @ Hot Stove New York.