After last nights overtime thriller at The Garden, we now know that the New York Rangers will return to the Eastern Conference Finals to meet the Tampa Bay Lightning.
Game 1 is set for Saturday (1 p.m. EST NBC) at Madison Square Garden thanks to Derek Stepan‘s heroics in Game 7.
“We enjoy this moment and we get ourselves ready for the Eastern Conference Finals,” Stepan said. “We still have a lot of work to do.”
The Lightning are no strangers to the Rangers. Last season, the Lightning and Rangers traded captains, with New York sending Ryan Callahan to Tampa Bay for Martin St. Louis, the Lightning’s career points leader. Another pair trading teams, forward Brian Boyle and defenseman Anton Stralman helped the New York Rangers advance to the Stanley Cup Final. This year it will be there job to prevent them from going back.
Tampa Bay shocked the hockey world upsetting the Montreal Canadiens in 6 games.
The solid play of Ben Bishop kept the Lightning in every game. They’ll need him to keep his stellar performance heading into the Conference Finals, where he won’t be the best goalie.
Down 3-1 in their series against the Washington Capitals Henrik Lundqvist put the Rangers on his back. Without him between the pipes it’s highly unlikely the Rangers are in this spot right now.
The biggest key to this series will be if the Rangers can limit the Lightning’s power play like they did the the Capitals #1 ranked regular season power play. Killing 89.3% of the power plays can devastate the best of teams. With Tampa Bay successful only 18% of the time that could be the series x-factor.