How playing the matchups could impact the Penguins-Rangers series; and how the Pens can avoid the ones they don't want

When it comes to analysis of the upcoming Penguins-Rangers Eastern Conference playoff series, there isn’t much need to go beyond the basics.

• Pittsburgh’s star players need to score. Something they have failed to do well enough in each of their three first-round losses over the past three years.

• Penguins goalie Casey DeSmith has to prove that he’s at least worthy of being on the same ice as Rangers star netminder Igor Shesterkin.

• The Penguins need to find a way to deal with the Rangers team speed and generate more than the disappointingly low 25.25 shots per game they threw at Shesterkin throughout four regular-season contests between the clubs. Three of which were won by the Rangers as the Pens managed a piddly four goals over four games.

If the Penguins fail in those departments, they will get swept out of the first round by a New York team, just as the Islanders did to them in 2019.

However, if the Penguins can win a game or two early and force a long series, then maybe the matchup game between the two coaching staffs will come into play.

After all, when it appeared like the Pens and Rangers were locked into being each other’s first-round dance partner months ago, a large chunk of the conversation seemed to be about which team would finish second in the Metropolitan Division and which team would finish third because the better-seeded team would have home-ice advantage in four out of the seven games.

That talk faded as the season was grinding through its last month, though, since the Penguins stumbled through the last few weeks of the season and just seemed happy to avoid dropping to fourth and the Rangers shifted their attention to nearly surpassing the Carolina Hurricanes for first place.

However, the long-predicted 2-3 showdown between the Rangers and Penguins has manifested, with Game 1 occurring at Madison Square Garden on Tuesday — the first of potentially four contests where the Rangers will have the final line change during games via home-ice advantage.

Penguins president of hockey operations Brian Burke sat in during a March episode of the Penguins Coach/GM Show on 105.9 The X. He explained to host Josh Getzoff the best way for road teams to minimize the impact of home teams getting the last line change.

“Everyone thinks that (if) you’ve got home ice, you’ve got the last matchup,” Burke said. “You don’t unless you are a good faceoff team. When I was in Anaheim, we had a great faceoff team. We would play in Ottawa or Minnesota or wherever we were playing. We’d win the draw, dump it in and change. Then we would have the matchup that we wanted. So if you are a good faceoff team, you don’t need home ice to control the line changes.”

During the season, the Penguins were better in that category, winning 51.1% of their draws. That’s tied for 11th in the NHL. The Rangers were 24th at 48.1%. But over the course of the four head-to-head contests, each team won the battle in the circles twice. In total, the Penguins had an 84-74 advantage (53%-47%).

“Faceoffs in my mind are important details,” head coach Mike Sullivan said Monday. “They are an important aspect of the game because they happen so often. When you can control the faceoff circle, it helps you establish the game that you want to play.”

But when it comes chasing matchups when the Pens and Rangers face one another, how important of a tactic is that? It seems like the two teams are content with having firepower versus firepower.

As NaturalStatTrick.com illustrates, in each of the three games the teams played against each other when Sidney Crosby was in uniform (he was sick for the fourth game), the Rangers had Mika Zibanejad’s line on the ice 5-on-5 more than any other. He was usually paired with Chris Kreider and Frank Vatrano (in the two games Vatrano faced Crosby as a Ranger since being acquired from Florida).

In the game that Crosby missed, a 3-0 Penguins loss at MSG, the Kreider-Zibanejad-Vatrano line was deployed against Evgeni Malkin’s unit for over nine minutes of ice time, by far the most of the game. Adam Fox and Ryan Lindgren skated against Crosby’s line more than any defensive pair in all three games, and they took on Malkin’s group the most in the contest Crosby missed.

“Their top pair, Fox and Lindgren, they play a lot,” winger Jake Guentzel said. “They might want to try to get them out there (against him, Crosby, and Bryan Rust). They just play a lot of minutes overall. We’ve got to make it hard for them. It’s a long series. If we make it hard for them right away, we’ll see how it goes.”

Similarly, Kris Letang and Brian Dumoulin were the dominant Pens defensive pair on the ice against Zibanejad’s line, usually getting 7:30-8:30 of 5-on-5 ice time.

But according to Sullivan, sometimes hunting for the matchup game can backfire.

“We’ll look for certain matchups and try to get certain guys on the ice against certain people,” Sullivan told Mark Madden on 105.9 The X Monday, “But we are certainly not going to chase it and get our team out of a rhythm either. Sometimes you can win the matchup battle and lose the war.”

As Sullivan pointed out when discussing faceoffs, he’s a big fan of details and nuances of the game. If you want some evidence, look back at his soliloquy about the importance of wall-play after a recent win against the Boston Bruins.

So how the matchups influence the game and how the faceoffs influence the matchups are elements to monitor. But, to reiterate, if Crosby, Malkin, Letang and Guentzel don’t score and if DeSmith can’t keep pace with Shesterkin, everything else will be reduced to footnote status.

In this week’s hockey podcast, Brian Metzer of the Penguins Radio Network joins me to preview the Penguins-Rangers series and the rest of the NHL Playoffs.

Listen: Tim Benz and Brian Metzer discuss the Penguins-Rangers playoff series