2014 Cup Finals

For what seems like the fourth straight year, the NHL will be blessed with a marquee Stanley Cup final.  Sure, LA isn’t exactly a hotbed of hockey traditionally, but the league will now be able to take advantage of the two biggest media markets in the nation.  And unlike in 2012, the New York-area entrant is the Rangers, one of the Original Six.

You have to go back to the 1981 World Series for the last time the major franchises from both LA and NYC met in a championship series for the four major sports.  And I am thinking this series will live up to the bill.  There are a few key points that you will need for looking into these Finals and picking a winner.

Offense vs. Defense

The two teams have had wildly different marches to the playoffs in many respects.  The Rangers have scored 54 goals, and their highest goal-scorer has a grand total of six.  In one more game than New York, the Kings have a baffling nineteen more goals scored.

This is somewhat explained by opposition: the Kings played the Sharks, Ducks, and Blackhawks, all of whom fared very well offensively during the regular season.  LA needed to score in order to keep up, and they’ve done just that, with five Kings in the top ten of all postseason points-leaders.  The Rangers, on the other hand, have no players in that group.

This comes as quite a shock to me, only because it’s hard imagining a team with Rick Nash, Brad Richards, and Martin St. Louis would be so absent from the offensive stat line.  That brings us, however, to the next important factor…

Hot Goalie vs. Not?

This is a tough one to judge, but the series is likely going to be shaped by Henrik Lundqvist.  While his traveling schedule has not been nearly as bad as it will be for the next two weeks or so, Lundqvist is reasserting his dominance on the biggest stage.  His 2.03 goals-against-average and .928 save percentage over the postseason are the real reason the Rangers have made it this far.  In the deciding games of each series, Henrik gave up a grand total of two goals.  That’s against the Flyers, Penguins, and Canadiens, teams who certainly brought the heat.  What’s better, Lundqvist has shown that he won’t lose confidence…his big performances against Philly and Montreal followed two really terrible losses, one of which saw Lundqvist being pulled.

Jonathan Quick, on the other hand, has been something of a mystery.  A 2.86 goals-against-average and a .908 save percentage are far cries from the numbers brought in by his opponent.  Quick also has been somewhat pedestrian lately, despite making a few big saves along the way.  While he backstopped the team to a Cup already, there’s no doubt that the hotter goalie will be lining up in the Rangers crease.

Resiliency

This will be my obligatory non-stat factor of the post.  You will hear over the next several days about the Kings winning three Game 7s on the road in this postseason, a record.  But, we should not forget the Rangers won in seven against Philly and needed to win three straight to beat the Penguins in a seven game series.  Throw in a tense six game win against Montreal, and it’s tough not to think the Rangers will be just a tough.

That said, we can’t underestimate the Kings ability to stick around.  While it feels like two months ago, the Kings beat the Sharks in for straight games to rally from a 3-0 series deficit, only the fourth such occasion in hockey ever.  San Jose didn’t step on the throat quick enough, a fact the Rangers cannot do at any point in this series.

Face-off Circle

It’s perhaps the least appreciated part of hockey by casual fans, but a big face-off guy is a huge boost to a team in the playoffs.  And the Kings are blessed with two of them, Jarrett Stoll and Anze Kopitar.  Stoll (57 percent) and Kopitar (54.4 percent) not only win the majority of their draws but they play on some of the top scoring lines.  The Rangers, by contrast, can send out Dominic Moore for these duties (57 percent), but he averages a full four fewer minutes of ice time than Stoll.  The Kings’ ability to win face-offs might be key in this game, especially on the power play.

Central Weakness for New York

The Rangers are woefully outgunned at center, and it isn’t even close.  Mike Richards, Jeff Carter, Stoll, and Kopitar can all score and, as said above, win face-offs.  The Rangers counter with Derek Stepan, Brad Richards, Derek Brassard, and Moore.  This isn’t to discount New York’s guys, but the only one of them with any prodigious goal-scoring talent is Richards.  I do expect Brassard to make life very uneasy for the Kings unit, since he enjoys the rough-and-tumble stuff, but in the end there really is no comparison when it comes to the centers.  All the more need for Henrik to be on fire.

Doughty Little Secret…

Not anymore…Drew Doughty has been a revelation in the postseason on the blue line for the Kings.  With twelve assists and nifty stick-work, Doughty will be a similar version of P.K. Subban, who gave the Rangers all they could handle in the last series.  That’s not to say, however, that he isn’t immune from a bad game…his Game 7 last night wasn’t particularly memorable, but he creates goals (16 assists) through well-timed shots and evasive maneuvers.  We will also watch Ryan McDonagh, the Rangers star blueliner who was the best American skater this year at Sochi, and may belong in Doughty’s tier for defensemen.

Homecoming

The Rangers brought in Marian Gaborik a few years back to give them a much-needed offensive boost.  While he posted two 40-goal seasons, the Rangers offloaded him at the trade deadline last year to shed salary and regain some depth.  And yet, now they are looking at Gaborik across the ice tied with Wayne Gretzky for the most goals ever in a Kings postseason with twelve.  Put in a good series, and Gaborik might move from being a Broadway blunder to a Tinseltown treasure (for the record, I am very proud of that sentence).

Prediction

It comes down to Lundqvist, and if he had home ice the first two games I might be more inclined to trust him here.  But LA has moved inexorably forward, refusing to go away despite being in some serious doldrums.  The series should be long, however, since the Kings have played a ton of hockey that drained them mentally and physically.  In the end, however, I’m not sure the Rangers can continue to channel Martin St. Louis’ emotion to a Cup victory.  Kings in 7.