New York Rangers and Tampa Bay Bolts Return to Garden Tied at Two

From the desk: RAISE GRESCHNER WITH THE GREATS

EASTERN CONFERENCE FINALS

GAME FOUR

Rangers     1

Lightning   4

FINAL

Back to Zero

The Blueshirts just can't have nice things ... like a 2-0 series lead.  

It was nice while it lasted.  

Their inability to possess the puck and sustain offensive zone presence is mind-numbing.  They spend too much time cycling the puck and setting up for a one-and-done instead of just putting shots on the net and cleaning up the garbage.  They get the puck deep, so why not more setups from behind the net?

Once again they're caught up in being too cute.  It's been this way throughout all three series, so this is nothing new.  But will they recognize in time as they did in previous rounds?  

We'll see Friday night.

Let's see what adjustments they make.  Because the Rangers have become very predictable in all their setups and strategy.  The Rangers failed to score an even-strength goal at Tampa's arena.  Said another way, the Bolts have dominated the Rangers over the last five periods.  Tampa has them figured out.  That's a problem, and Coach Gallant needs to solve it.  When Adam Fox leads all skaters in minutes but fails to take a single shot, it's because the Rangers are at the other end of the ice.  Thus, Fox finished game four with a minus-three.

The Rangers played without Ryan Strome and Filip Chytil.  Missing two centermen matters.  Jacob Trouba stepped in with a team-high seven SOGs.  But none found their way past Andrei Vasilevskiy who stopped 34 of 35 shots.

And so here we go again ...

Defend this house!

The Rangers have the home-ice advantage; game five and a potential game seven are slated for the Garden.  Whoever wins two of the following three games advances to the Stanley Cup Finals.  The other team will go home and ponder their salary cap situation.