NHL: Stanley Cup Playoffs-New York Rangers at Washington Capitals

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NEW YORK — Not five minutes into the second period Sunday afternoon at rollicking Madison Square Garden, the New York Rangers were scoring their second goal in a blink and Washington Capitals defenseman Vincent Iorio was sprawled along the boards, grasping his shoulder, prone on the ice. The Capitals, irate, protested. To win this first-round Stanley Cup playoff series, they will need an argument or two to fall their way. This one didn’t.

Not much more than a minute later, Capitals forward Beck Malenstyn crumpled to the ice, which is what happens when your face runs into the elbow of Matt Rempe, the 6-foot-7 mountain of a Rangers rookie. Oh, this came as New York’s Jimmy Vesey fired another puck past Capitals goaltender Charlie Lindgren. In two minutes and a snap of the fingers, the Rangers had a three-goal lead and Capitals bodies were strewn about the rink.

“They owned probably five minutes of that game,” forward Tom Wilson said, “and we got behind.”

Also true: “Honestly,” Coach Spencer Carbery said, “I don’t mind our second.”

That says a lot about this series and the margin of error with which the Capitals are dealing. Those rapid-fire goals allowed the Rangers to build <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2024/04/21/rangers-capitals-stanley-cup-playoffs-game-1/" target=_blank>a 4-1 victory in Game 1</a>. Maybe the Caps didn’t do too much wrong over the entirety of an afternoon that put them in a series deficit. But this is the reality: If the Capitals rarely score three goals in a game — and the last month or more of their regular season says that’s the case — they can’t allow three in two-plus minutes and expect to survive a day, much less a series.

“That’s our group, right?” Carbery said. “We’ve got to find a way to get a little bit more offensively, get two, maybe three [goals]. And then we win a game, 3-2.”

Still, Sunday is kind of how this series was scripted to go, and the Caps will have to play almost perfectly — read: no stretches like the above and maybe squeezing one through on the power play — to extend this series deep into next week. Over the course of the season, there is almost no statistical category in which the Capitals have the advantage.

Check the 82-game evidence. The Rangers ranked seventh in the NHL in both goals for and goals against. They had the third-best power play and the third-best penalty kill. That’s balance. Washington’s ranks in those four categories: 28th, 16th, 18th (though the power play was outstanding in the second half of the season) and 19th. Translation: One team won the Presidents’ Trophy for earning the most points in the league, and the other needed to win its final three games <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2024/04/16/capitals-flyers-stanley-cup-playoffs/" target=_blank>to lock up the final spot</a> in this tournament.

Which team is which reveals itself in the stats. But it reveals itself to the eye, too. Give ’em a chance, and …

“The second goal, they take a ‘D’ out, and they’re opportunistic,” workhorse defenseman John Carlson said. “They’re a good team. We know they’re going to be able to bury chances. We know we can’t be giving them two-on-ones in the middle of the ice and stuff like that. It’s nothing we didn’t expect.”

Speak for the rest of the league, John. Tell them the Rangers beat the Caps, 4-1, in Game 1, and the response would be a shrug: “Yeah, sounds about right.”

So within some parameters, there’s a house money element to this series. The Caps can’t roll over and just get obliterated, because that doesn’t provide the kind of experience the six players in their lineup who hadn’t appeared in a Stanley Cup playoff game until Sunday need to make this something they can build on. But if they’re competitive, this could be fun, with a little flair of “Why not us?” to the entire endeavor.

“We’re the 16 seed, right?” Carbery said. “No one gave us a shot to get in this spot. Our team was written off at the [trade] deadline or before that. Now, we’re not playing a ‘poor me’ card here and thinking that we’re just going to give it our best. That’s not the mind-set of our team. But also to play loose and let this thing roll and go after it and not be nervous about what happens.”

There’s a formula here. It’s just not what happened Sunday. In the first period, the Caps took three penalties. That’s not sustainable if this series is to be anything that resembles long. The days when the playoffs began and a chief concern was “Will the Capitals be able to draw enough penalties to unleash their lethal power play?” — those days are over.

The formula, then, is almost the opposite of that. The Caps won 20 one-goal games in the regular season — exactly half of their 40 wins. They scored more than two goals just once in their last 11 games — and somehow finished on a 4-1-0 run, grabbing every point needed to be granted this opportunity.

“We’ve been playing one-goal games here for the last couple of months,” said Max Pacioretty, who is in his first season in Washington, his 16th in the league, and who played in his 75th playoff game Sunday. “You got to try and play playoff hockey early and not get stunned once you’re there.”

There were Capitals teams from a decade or more ago — 2010 comes to mind — in which the offense was lethal and the defense was lax. That calls immediately for adjustments when the tightened-up playoffs arrive, which isn’t always healthy. Not to pick on that group, but those Presidents’ Trophy-winning Caps bowed out in the first round, upset by eighth-seeded Montreal in seven epic games.

These Caps aren’t nearly as talented or as deep as those best teams from the past. But upon arrival at Madison Square Garden — both Sunday and when the series resumes Tuesday night — the style required to squeeze out games is obvious. Hint: It’s not to try to win, 5-4.

“We know exactly what our playoff style looks like and the things that we need to do from a tactical standpoint,” Carbery said.

There is, then, the emotional part. The physicality, the pace, the intensity, Carbery said, will be “exponentially larger.”

That means the chippiness that crept into Game 1 has to be kept under control. Yes, the Caps felt wronged by the hit on Iorio, from which the rookie did not return. Wilson clearly disagreed with calls he didn’t draw, then calls that went against him. At the end of the second period, defenseman Trevor van Riemsdyk remained on the ice as his teammates exited, apparently ready to take on the Rangers by himself — until Wilson skated back out and joined him.

It’s one game in. Tensions are already high. Don’t get sucked into a battle that puts your team at a further disadvantage.

“I didn’t see the hit that led to the second goal,” Wilson said. “I still haven’t seen it. … There’s no call, and they get one. That one’s a little bit unfortunate.”

Here’s a trap the Caps can’t fall into: blaming the refs. The difference between these two teams was determined over 82 games of the regular season. It was apparent in Game 1 of the postseason. Don’t gripe about perceived injustices. Play your game — a game that was successful and disciplined enough to get to this point — and see how far that can push the Rangers.

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Barry Svrluga became a sports columnist for The Washington Post in December 2016. He arrived at The Post in 2003 to cover football and basketball at the University of Maryland and has covered the Washington Nationals, the Washington Football Team, the Olympics and golf.

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Capitals’ margin of error vs. Rangers is razor thin

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