The New York Rangers and Tampa Bay Lightning are set for Game 3 and Game 4 of the NHL playoffs in the eastern conference semifinals and the matchups from Amalie Arena start on Wednesday from the NBC Sports Network on TV and the NBCSN Live Extra website starting at 8 pm ET as the series is tied 1-1 and now NY will try and take back home ice.
The Rangers started off the series with a win at home after getting some key plays from Chris Kreider and Derek Stepan and now they need to bounce back. The Rangers were terrible in Game 2 and the game was close for a while, but they let things go and lost 6-2, their worst game of the playoffs. The Rangers defense was sloppy, players took bad penalties and it was all summed up by a lost opportunity allowing a shorthanded goal to Tampa.
The Rangers now have to try and bounce back after allowing six goals and the team needs to find a way to slow down Tyler Johnson, who is leading the league in scoring during the postseason. Johnson had a few impressive goals in the game and now the Rangers have to find a way to slow him down while also finding a way to score, which has been an issue all postseason.
The Rangers massive streak of one goal games ended with the loss and now the team will look at bouncing back on Wednesday night. Rick Nash has not played well enough and Martin St. Louis has basically been absent all postseason. St. Louis and Ryan Callahan were traded for each other last year and now the teams are matching up in the playoffs.
The scoring started off in the first period for the Lightning with Tyler Johnson scoring twice, including on a power play. Kreider had a goal for the Rangers, but then he took a dumb penalty and that allowed the PPG goal. The Rangers allowed another goal to Johnson and they responded with a goal from Stepan and while the Rangers had been playing terribly, they were right in the game. Then came the third period and Henrik Lundqvist could not deal with all the traffic in front of him, allowing three more goals.
There were over 10 penalties in the game and the Rangers were the team who suffered the most for them. Nash needs to get his game going and he comes in after scoring over 40 goals in the season, but he has scored just twice this postseason and has seven points overall in 14 games. Victor Hedman has played very well for the Lightning and he has been one of the keys to the team winning in Game 2 and now he will be key moving forward for Tampa.
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