Rangers’ Experience Leads to Series Victory

The New York Rangers got stronger with each game and in the end were too much for the young, inexperienced Montreal Canadiens.

“I think the schedule, with two three-day breaks, really helped us a lot,” said forward Adam Graves after the Rangers finished their Eastern Conference playoff series with a 5-3 victory Sunday at Montreal.

The Rangers lost the opening two games of the best-of-seven series at home, but bounced back to take the next four games and advance to the conference semifinals against Pittsburgh.

New York entered the playoffs with a five-game losing streak compounded by injuries to key players such as Mark Messier, Brian Leetch, Pat Verbeek and Graves.

By Sunday, however, everyone was back to health and the Rangers were winning again.

“When you’re down 0-2, you don’t know how the breaks are going to go,” Leetch said. “But we did know that we could play a lot better. We were confident that we could play well, but whether we could come back and win it was another matter.”

Graves, Alexei Kovalev and Jari Jurri scored in a 1:02 span of the middle of the opening period after Verbeek had opened the scoring at 6:24 on the Rangers’ first shot.

Doug Lidster added a power-play goal in the second period after the Canadiens got goals from Mark Recchi and Pierre Turgeon. Defenseman Patrice Brisebois added one for Montreal in the final period.

Detroit 4, Winnipeg 1--Vyacheslav Kozlov scored twice in the first period as the Red Wings advanced to the second round of the playoffs with a victory that ended NHL hockey in Winnipeg before a crowd of 15,567.

The Red Wings took the Western Conference series, 4-2, over the Jets, who are moving to Phoenix next season.

“I don’t know when it’s going to sink in but it’s going to sink in pretty hard,” said the Jets’ Keith Tkachuk. “There’s a lot of sad faces right now.”

Steve Yzerman also scored in the first to put the Red Wings ahead, 3-0. That held until the third period, when Norm Maciver scored for the Jets.

Pittsburgh 3, Washington 2--The Penguins ousted the Capitals from the playoffs for the fourth time in six years thanks to Ken Wregget’s 35 saves at Landover, Md.

The Penguins built a 3-0 lead in the opening 13 minutes and then cruised behind Wregget to become the 11th team to win an NHL playoff series after losing the first two games at home.

Mario Lemieux, Jaromir Jagr and Ron Francis scored for the Penguins, who won the last four games of the series, including the pivotal four-overtime game that tied the series 2-2.

Pittsburgh rallied from a two-game deficit to eliminate the Capitals in 1992 and 1995. The Penguins beat Washington in five games in 1991 and lost to the Capitals in six games in 1994.