Turns out it’s hard not to notice when there is a giant bull’s-eye hanging on your collective back.
“We have to embrace it, and challenge ourselves,” Rangers winger Rick Nash said on Tuesday. “We’re obviously going to be the team to beat.”
Come Thursday night at the Garden, the Penguins will be the first team to get a chance at the Presidents’ Trophy-winning Blueshirts, who go into the first round of the postseason as a prohibitive favorite to win the Stanley Cup come June.
But expectations are something the Rangers are trying not to focus on. As Nash said, they might know they’re the team to beat, but that isn’t taking their mind-set to anyplace beyond the Penguins.
“We came in here this season with very high expectations knowing that we had a lot of work to do,” coach Alain Vigneault said after a spirited practice on Tuesday, the team’s first since the regular-season finale in Washington on Saturday afternoon.
“We’ve done some of the work, but we’re still very aware there is still a lot to be done. First thing that needs to be done, first thing on our agenda, is Pittsburgh.”
Vigneault doesn’t need to remind his team how dangerous the Penguins can be — although he probably has, repeatedly. Even though they have been hobbled with injuries and have struggled down the stretch of this regular season, the Rangers’ second-round opponent last postseason has a core of elite-level talent in Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin, as well as a goalie in Marc-Andre Fleury — who has had shaky performances in big spots, but has also backstopped a Cup winner for the Pens in 2009.
“We finished first, and we get an opportunity to play against the Pittsburgh Penguins and two of the best players — if not the two best — players in the league,” Vigneault said. “That’s the hand that we’ve been dealt. We know it’s going to be a real tough opponent, an opponent we have a ton of respect for. At this time of year, you have to bring your best game on the ice, and that’s what we’re going to try to do.”
The majority of last season’s Rangers team is intact, and they were a group that went down to the Penguins 3-1 in their best-of-seven second-round series last spring before coming back and winning a dramatic Game 7. That run culminated in the Stanley Cup final, where five tightly contested games against the Kings resulted in a loss, a reminder of how hard it is to reach the top rung of the ladder.
Another reminder being the Kings, with a roster barely changed from this past season, missed the playoffs all together.
“This is definitely the best time of year, for a lot of reasons,” Rangers goalie Henrik Lundqvist said. “You’ve been working a long time to get here, to get into this spot. And it’s tough to make it. There are a lot of good teams, they’re not in it. For that reason alone, you should appreciate this opportunity.”
So Lundqvist and his Rangers are the favorites, and how could they not be after locking up the most points in the league with two games remaining in the regular season.
But the playoffs can discard expectations quickly, so the Rangers are relishing another opportunity to make a run for the Cup, no matter what the odds says.
“I think looking at all the teams in the playoffs, I think all of them have an opportunity to win,” Lundqvist said. “I think you just have to be realistic and humble about the situations, that there are a lot of good teams out there that want exactly the same thing you want. That’s why we just have to focus on the first game.”