The Presidents’ Trophy “curse” isn’t really a thing, and even if it was, the New York Rangers don’t seem to care.
In fact — if we were looking for good indicators of playoff success – winning the Presidents’ Trophy is actually excellent, as eight of the 28 winners (28.6 percent) of the award have gone on to win the Stanley Cup.
The real cursed team appears to be the Pittsburgh Penguins, who couldn’t muster enough offense from their big guns up front or their injury-depleted defensive corps to keep up with the Rangers.
A closely contested series that saw every game decided by a single goal, most of the blame will likely fall at the feet of Pittsburgh’s top forwards, but that isn’t an entirely fair assessment of a Pittsburgh side that limped its way into the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
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The Penguins entered the playoffs ranked 14th in the NHL in Expected GF% and 10th amongst playoff teams (51.22%). That’s in contrast to New York’s eighth-best Expected GF% league-wide and the sixth-best among playoff teams (52.31%). The Rangers, in fact, ranked third in Expected GF% in the Eastern Conference this season, behind only the New York Islanders and Detroit Red Wings. They entered the Stanley Cup Playoffs as a team that scores on high-percentage shots with a high-octane offense led by Rick Nash, Martin St. Louis, Derick Brassard, Derek Stepan, and Chris Kreider.
Defensively, New York may miss Anton Stralman – who is now playing a major role for another Eastern Conference contender in Tampa Bay – but they have adjusted and played well with Dan Boyle replacing him in the top-four on the back end.
But it was an entirely different story in Pittsburgh. The Penguins barely scraped into the Stanley Cup Playoffs by beating the league-worst Buffalo Sabres on the final day. They made a bunch of trades to try and stock up for a playoff run, but imploded after a series of injuries decimated their blue-line.
Kris Letang is out (on the IR) with concussion symptoms a year after he had to overcome a stroke. Olli Maatta has been out of the line-up for much of the year due to a combination of thyroid cancer and now shoulder surgery. Christian Ehrhoff missed the Penguins last nine regular season games, and was unable to play in the playoffs due to an upper-body injury that has been slow to improve. The only remaining member of their opening night top-four was Paul Martin, who played a massive role for the Penguins and is now likely headed to free agency.
Now that they’ve been eliminated, the Penguins are left to wonder what to do with one of the oldest rosters in the NHL that lacks youthful options to inject into the lineup. If anything, they may want to resist the urge to blow up the roster and instead wait to see how the team can pull together when healthy. After all, when their defence was healthy early in the season, they were one of the best teams in the East.
Trading Simon Despres to Anaheim for Ben Lovejoy was likely a mistake. Despres is younger, has more upside, and is cost controlled as a restricted free agent for the foreseeable future. Frankly, he played better for Pittsburgh than Lovejoy showed late in the year. The addition of Ian Cole from St Louis at the deadline at least mitigates some of the issue, but if Ehrhoff or Martin opt to seek money or term with another team in free agency then that would open up even more holes to fill on the blueline.
The Penguins probably need to focus more on the back end than they do up front – despite never-ending concerns about the production of Crosby, Malkin and whoever lines up on their wings.
If the Rangers hope to continue down the road to a second consecutive Stanley Cup appearance, they need to improve their special-teams performance and keep bottling up their opponents. All four of their wins against Pittsburgh came by an identical 2-1 margin, and when things opened up they dropped a 4-3 loss.
New York has improved in key areas this season and if they keep up this level of defensive performance they could see a deep run in these playoffs – possibly all the way to a Stanley Cup.
Pittsburgh, however, has a lot to consider this summer.
