New York Magazine

Rangers fans have surely encountered a lot of references to 1994 in recent weeks. (Why, there's one on the back page of the Post just this morning.) There are a couple of reasons for this: This is their best shot at a title since that season, and it's also the sort of thing that writers who don't often cover hockey — the Mike Lupicas of the world — can easily reference. (Ian O'Connor, for instance, has written three articles on the Rangers during the Eastern Conference Finals and has included a reference to Stephane Matteau in two of them.)

One can ask "What if?" after lots of hockey games. What if the puck bounces differently here, or what if a call goes another way there? But most hockey games aren't as important as Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Finals, and after the Rangers lost tonight's game by a 5-3 score to fall behind 3-2 in this series, their fans would be forgiven for asking variations of the question. As in, what if Stephen Gionta was whistled for high-sticking Derek Stepan before he could score the game's first goal? Or what if Marian Gaborik didn't shoot the puck over the Devils' net when the score was still 2-0 New Jersey? Or what if Henrik Lundqvist blocked a very stoppable shot on New Jersey's third goal? Or what if Ryan Callahan's second-period shot banked off the post and into the net, instead of away from it? Like we said, you can pick out moments in any game that could have affected its outcome if they'd gone differently — one could even point to things that went the Rangers' way tonight — but if the Rangers lose this series, this game will haunt them, and their fans, all summer long.

The Rangers and Devils have each won two games thus far in the Eastern Conference Finals, but make no mistake: New Jersey has controlled play more often than the Rangers have. We won’t go into a period-by-period breakdown, but as we said after Game 4, the Devils should be pretty pleased with how they’ve played in this series. The Rangers have a couple things going for them, though: On the occasions that the Rangers have controlled the play — more specifically, in the third periods of Games 1 and 3 — they’ve been really good. (They outscored New Jersey 3-0 in each of those periods, scoring twice on Martin Brodeur in each game, then adding an empty-netter.) Twenty outstanding minutes can sometimes make up for subpar play earlier in the game, though we’d hardly suggest trying to make a habit of that. The other thing the Rangers have going for them, of course, is Henrik Lundqvist, who has two shutouts in the series and is capable of stealing a game. Which is a long-winded way of saying that the Rangers generally need to up their game a bit more than the Devils do as the series heads into tonight’s Game 5.