NHL Playoffs 2012: Can The New York Rangers Repeat Their Round 1 Rally?

All of the current New York Rangers have faced this situation before. Head coach John Tortorella has confronted it twice.

Trailing a Stanley Cup playoff series 3-2 and having spilled home-ice advantage, the Rangers are tasked with winning back-to-back elimination games. And they must force the second of those by claiming the first on enemy property.

Tortorella, along with current pupils Brad Richards and Ruslan Fedotenko, did this once before as members of the Tampa Bay Lightning. They pulled off a 3-2, double-overtime victory in Calgary to push the 2004 Stanley Cup finals to a Game 7 back home, where they prevailed 2-1.

More recently, the top-seeded Blueshirts rebounded from a Game 5 falter at Madison Square Garden and staved off elimination at the hands of the Senators with a 3-2 win in Ottawa. Three nights later, back home for the rubber match, they warded off the Sens for a 2-1 triumph in the 2012 Eastern Conference quarterfinals.

They will now need to rerun that resilience in the wake of Wednesday night’s tough, 5-3 loss to the New Jersey Devils in Game 5 of the conference finals. The Rangers deleted the oft-brittle 3-0 deficit to draw a 3-3 knot on the first shift of the third period, but still surrendered the decider to Ryan Carter late in regulation.

Despite accumulating more shots (28-17), more hits (40-26), more blocked shots (17-16), more takeaways (8-3) and more faceoff wins (37-25), the Rangers could never raise the upper hand where it counted. They blinked in the third-period staring contest and settled for a 5-3 falter finalized by New Jersey Devils' captain Zach Parise’s empty netter.

“I thought we probably played our best game of the series,” Tortorella said in his postgame press conference, his second straight level-headed, reasonably timed address (see the video above).

He later added, “We’ve been through it before…I have a tremendous amount of confidence in how we’ll react to this.”

There is little data, if any, to refute Tortorella’s claim. All 12 of the Rangers forwards and half of their defensive corps tested New Jersey's goaltender Martin Brodeur at least once in Game 5.

Every skater except Carl Hagelin and Brad Richards landed at least one check, but Richards spent enough with three takeaways and four shots on goal. Brian Boyle had otherworldly success at the dot, winning 13 of his 14 draws while Richards and Derek Stepan finished at .500 or better.

What that says about their odds in Friday’s do-or-die dance is difficult to gauge.

On the one hand, they can go in knowing they need to alter their opportunism and cut down on untimely blunders to sustain their chances of survival.

And they can certainly use the Ottawa series as a reference point, which Tortorella clearly indicated they will.

On the other hand, the Devils can count their blessings, knowing they nabbed their first lead of the series in spite of a bona fide scare in the heart during Wednesday night’s action. A more assertive, 60-minute effort that translates to a little less New York dominance in various statistical columns could spell an end to the series on Friday.

In addition, the Rangers’ catalyst goaltender, Henrik Lundqvist, has demonstrated unprecedented vulnerability in back-to-back losses this week.

As it stands right now, the Devils, who surmounted their own 3-2 series deficit to beat Florida in the opening round, are a pristine 2-0 when looking to drop the curtain on a playoff adversary.

The Rangers are 3-0 when facing elimination.

One of those trends will have to give on Friday, but perhaps the only bad bet for Game 6 would be the Rangers will die on the Rock―aka the Prudential Center―at their own hands.