In game two the New York Rangers could not establish a forecheck at all. No matter what they tried the Boston Bruins would just chip the puck around and be on their way out of the zone. The Rangers' third line with Brian Boyle, Taylor Pyatt, and Derek Dorsett were the most consistent with offensive pressure.
Very rarely do you see the New York Rangers make as many defensive mistakes as they did. Even their most steady players like Dan Girardi and Ryan Callahan struggled and had some breakdowns. Girardi had a particularly rough day registering a -4 rating. Callahan was also a minus today and was caught out of position on the deciding third goal of the game.
The lack of forechecking pressure led to a crazy amount of odd man rushes for the Boston Bruins. At one point in the first period they had five odd man rushes, and usually the New York Rangers giving up five odd man rushes in a game is a lot. The Bruins defense jumping into the play caused a lot of four on twos and four on threes which led to two goals.
The New York Rangers had fought back from being down 1-0 and 2-1, Rick Nash had finally scored his first goal of the season, and you could feel the momentum shifting as everyone knew the next goal was huge. Derek Stepan hit both posts and then a couple of minutes later the Boston Bruins took the lead. This goal was deflating to the Rangers and they never recovered.
The Achilles for the New York Rangers all season has been their power play. They went 0-5 in Game 2 even though they generated more zone time which can be considered a step in the right direction. Quite frankly I've run out of adjectives to describe how bad it has been, and as a diehard fan I am just disgusted. The majority of the blame has to fall on the shoulders of head coach John Tortorella. There is absolutely no reason for a team with this much talent to have a power play that is 2-36 in the playoffs. Something has to change, but we all know nothing will.
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