Bill Clement

Having made the playoffs for the third straight year under coach Tom Renney, the Rangers shouldn’t be sold short of capping their season with a ticker-tape parade down New York’s Canyon of Heroes.

The only other time such a celebration took place for this franchise was in 1994, when captain Mark Messier helped end over a half-century of futility on ice in the Big Apple.

Looking at the competitive balance in the Eastern Conference, one would be crazy not to think the Rangers, who open up the playoffs against the Devils, could make it to the Stanley Cup finals. And if they do, with the strengths they possess and with the possibility their opponent will have paid a heavy price to come out of the rough-and-tumble West, the Rangers will have a better-than-average chance to sometime in June skate around the ice with Lord Stanley's Cup held high.

Four of a special kind
I love that the Rangers have more than one proven difference-maker on their roster. When it comes to big-game players who have been there before and know what is required to execute on a big stage, the Rangers have quality and quantity. Renney is not fretting over who he can turn to at crunch time. He’s got multiple options.

The team’s top four scorers, Scott Gomez, Jaromir Jagr, Chris Drury and Brendan Shanahan, each have at least one Stanley Cup and they have eight Cups between them (Drury 1, Gomez and Jagr 2 apiece, and Shanahan 3). And for Shanahan and Jagr this postseason should carry with it added incentive as both stars could well be making the last Stanley Cup run of their careers.

For Gomez and Drury this is their first time in the playoffs with the Rangers as both were signed as free agents last summer. They’re making big money and thus the big expectations, especially in the postseason. They’ll quickly find out that in New York at playoff time talk surrounding the Rangers from dawn to dusk is all about winning the Stanley Cup. They need to use that talk to fuel their play.

Showing up on defense
They Rangers have a defense-first mindset. They are extremely stingy in that aspect of the game. That makes them one of the hardest teams to play against in the league. They pretty much always have forwards in the neutral zone applying defensive pressure and they seldom allow odd-man rushes.

The emphasis on defense comes from Renney, whose most impressive accomplishment has been getting all his high profile, offensively gifted players to buy into his defense-driven philosophy. Offense wins in the regular season, defense wins in the playoffs. The Rangers, who earlier in the season were the No. 1 defensive team in the league, finished fourth in that category.

The Rangers don’t a have a bona fide star on the blue line, but Michal Rozsival is their best defenseman and is a key performer on their power play. He is an underrated player, who’ll be an unrestricted free agent attracting much interest this summer. The team’s younger defensemen, Dan Girardi, Marc Staal and Fedor Tyutin have really developed this season. Renney deserves a great deal of credit for the progress of this group. The table has to be set for younger players, especially those on defense, to develop and succeed and Renney has done that.

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All hail Henrik
There have been inconsistencies this season in the performance of Rangers goalie Henrik Lundqvist, but he played some of his best hockey in March. The Swede did not allow more than three goals in any of his starts that month. So while Lundqvist’s season in general has lacked the consistency of his first two years in the league, he has pulled his game together at just the right time.

When looking at the Rangers and asking the question of whether they have the caliber of goalie to be able to not only go deep into the playoffs, but to also win the Stanley Cup, the answer is yes. When looking back at the league’s recent past and the goalies who have taken their teams to the Stanley Cup finals, the Rangers have much reason for optimism as Lundqvist certainly has as much if not more talent than those keepers.

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