When Capitals meet Rangers, it feels like the playoffs
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Version 0 of 1. T.J. Oshie wasn’t a member of the Washington Capitals last year, but he still knows the feeling. When he was with the St. Louis Blues, the Los Angeles Kings consistently beat the Blues in the playoffs, making those regular season meetings between the teams more meaningful. “When they end your season like that, there’s always a little bit of that feeling left, like it’s time to get them back,” Oshie said. “You want to take them over, and you want to beat them every time. You can sense that.” He felt it from his new teammates when the Capitals last played the New York Rangers, a 5-2 Washington loss at Madison Square Garden on Nov. 3. There was the emotion of playing the team that knocked the Capitals out of the postseason a year ago (and losing again), and at the time, first place in the Metropolitan Division was at stake. The opportunistic Rangers capitalized on the Capitals’ mistakes to take the top place in the standings. But since then, Washington has been the hot team, stringing together a series of wins to take the Eastern Conference lead with 48 points through 31 games. New York has struggled with injuries and has lost five of its past six games. Despite the Capitals’ comfortable six-point lead on the Rangers in the Metropolitan Division, Sunday’s rematch at Madison Square Garden still has something extra to it. [Ovechkin leaves practice early but will play vs. Rangers] “They’re the team that we probably have the most negative history against,” Capitals defenseman Karl Alzner said. “They’ve been at the top of the league for a few years, and everybody has kind of used them to kind of gauge their game. The last game against them was kind of a weird one, I think, so we want to see how we match up now. Even though they’re going through a tough time here, it’s like those teams that you always come to play.” Said Brooks Laich: “They’ve kind of transitioned into our biggest rival probably the last four or five years, especially with the playoff history. We want to extend our lead on first place, and they’re going to try and close it, so it shouldn’t be a hard game to get up for.” The Capitals have mixed opinions about that last game against New York. Alzner said he thought the team played well; Washington had 67 shot attempts to New York’s 38. But when goaltender Braden Holtby thinks back on that game, he considers it one of the worst the Capitals have played because of the costly errors and odd-man rushes they allowed. It was one of Holtby’s bumpiest performances. He gave up his first four goals of the game on 11 shots on goal, and Capitals Coach Barry Trotz had considered yanking him before the third period. “We let their strengths overpower ours in that game,” Holtby said. “They got a lot of off-the-rush chances, which is what they thrive on.” The Capitals are confident that when they play their style, utilizing the forecheck and getting pucks deep, there isn’t a team that can beat them. They saw that in the third period against Tampa Bay on Friday night, when Washington talked about playing “heavier” in the locker room and then scored four third-period goals to rally from a three-goal deficit for a 5-3 win. Alzner said New York would prefer to play a “run-and-gun” style with long passes, and the Capitals got trapped in that when the teams met in November. He sensed a lift in energy in practice Saturday morning and in the locker room after the rally against Tampa Bay, a validation that Washington is never truly out of a game when it plays how it should. “It seems that the goals we give up are the goals that we gift,” Laich said. “They aren’t goals too much that are earned. I think we’re a very difficult team to play against, and we don’t give up a lot. I think we’re hard to score on, but when we make mental errors and turn pucks over and give odd-man rushes, those are easy goals that we’re not making them work for. If we can limit those, I really like our chances.” The Capitals have played the Rangers in the postseason in their past four trips to the playoffs. Even with New York’s recent struggles, the game represents a measuring stick for the future, a postseason meeting again a possibility. “They’re a good hockey team, we know that,” Trotz said. “If you’re going to get through this division, you’re going to probably, at some point, have to go through the Rangers, which we’ve seen many times as Capitals. We’ll go in there and try to put our best game in front of it and see what happens.” |