Stanley Cup Playoffs 2012: Team-First Mentality Will Lead Rangers to Finals

The Rangers and the Devils are pretty evenly matched. Both have won a game in the Eastern Conference finals. Both are the beneficiaries of excellent goaltending. Both of them have suffered through battles in order to get to this point.

But the Rangers have one X-factor that will carry them toward three more wins and the Stanley Cup finals.

Coach John Tortorella put it best after Game 2, when he was asked to glorify players' individual accomplishments. According to the New York Times' Jeff Z. Klein, he responded, "This isn't golf—it's a team sport."

And that is exactly what makes the Rangers so good. They play as one cohesive unit, disregarding any individual honors, because they know that once they hoist the Cup next month, it will be the biggest reward any player on the team could possibly receive.

It's a philosophy that's paid off in the past—most notably when Tortorella was behind the bench in Tampa Bay in 2004 and led the Lightning to a Stanley Cup victory.

According to Klein, Jay Feaster—who was the general manager of the Lightning back then—subscribes wholeheartedly to the belief. Feaster told the Times: 

"

Oh yeah, that’s exactly how he was then. It’s never about anyone other than the team. It’s never about him, it’s not about anybody other than the team, and that’s his whole focus. 

"

It is that mentality—that team-wide resilience—that's allowed the Rangers to prevail in two hard-fought, seven-game series this postseason, one against the Senators and one against the Capitals. As the Kings could tell you, it doesn't matter that those two teams were the lowest seeds in the East. In the playoffs, it's a new game, and being the top seed comes with its own unique pressures.

Facing elimination against both of those teams, the Rangers could've crumbled, but they didn't.

It's not only because netminder Henrik Lundqvist boasts a third-best 1.66 goals-against average and a fourth-best .937 save percentage in the postseason. It's not only because Marian Gaborik and Brad Richards have been lethal with the puck throughout both the regular season and the postseason.

It's because every player knows how to use one another to his best advantages and his fullest potential. You can have a team full of stars and still fail—just ask the Miami Heat. Winning requires a blend of mutual respect, confidence and skill that is much easier to preach than it is to attain. With that mentality comes the kind of consistency that allows a team to persevere through the physically- and mentally-draining NHL postseason.

The Rangers are not the most talented team in the playoffs. It takes much more than an excellent goaltender to succeed in the postseason, as teams like the Bruins and the Canucks have proven. But the most talented teams don't often win; the teams with the coaches who can get the most out of their players are the ones still riding high in the waning months of the season.

Say what you want about Tortorella, but he knows how to coach a team in the playoffs.