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Rangers must rely on their experience

Arthur Staple

12:25 PM EDT, April 28, 2008

The Rangers need veterans like Jaromir Jagr and Chris Drury, left, to set a tone not only in the locker room but on the ice in Tuesday's Game 3. (AP Photo / April 27, 2008)

The Penguins are not exactly beating up the Rangers, not knocking the New Yorkers silly after two games.

But the Rangers are getting beat. Holding serve at home, as the phrase goes, might be no cause for alarm in the home-heavy NBA or in Major League Baseball, but in hockey, a team that expects to win a playoff series expects to win one of the first two on the road.

And no, the Rangers are not far off. One less banked-in shot, one slower whistle, and maybe they're not down 2-0 coming back to the Garden Tuesday night.

But they have looked a step slower than the young, hungry Penguins, whose forwards are making the Rangers' defensemen look very average while making sure to frustrate the Rangers' forwards with their own brand of solid defense.

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Marc-Andre Fleury hasn't been better than Henrik Lundqvist in net, but Fleury hasn't had to be better the way the Rangers have failed to do a lot of the things required to win one or two on the road.

So what gives the Rangers the edge now, besides 18,200 fans in their own building? This is time for experience.

Not the sort of calm, everything's-gonna-be-OK experience. This is when Brendan Shanahan and his three Stanley Cups and Jaromir Jagr and his two Cups need to come out and set a tone, not just with words in the locker room.

Jagr has been tough on the puck and tough on the opposing captain, yelling at Sidney Crosby to "stand up!" after Sid the Kid went down under the grab of Fedor Tyutin in the first period Sunday. Jagr is playing with the intensity and strength that one might expect of a guy who could be suiting up for the Rangers for the final time, except that the frustration tends to take hold of Jagr a bit quicker than it does with most hockey superstars.

His barking at Crosby was not the usual Jagr, the same way that his attempted smack of then-Devil Scott Gomez was out of the ordinary two playoffs ago. That popped Jagr's shoulder out and added a further humiliation to the Devils' first-round sweep.

Jagr needs to do what he does best, what he claimed after the game he told Crosby: Just play hockey. When he does that, the Rangers have been pretty good.

The talking and chirping and sneaky, dirty play can be left to Shanahan, who excels at such matters of psychology. His 39-year-old body isn't what it once was, even just a few months ago, and it's certainly time for Tom Renney to shuffle some lines and get Gomez with a faster wing at even strength.

Shanahan is still a decent special-teams player, though, and he's more than decent at striking the right tone. A striking hit or well-timed glove in the face Tuesday night might do just that and show the younger Rangers that, while it isn't time to panic, it is time to play with some desperation and the sense that this is their time.

It is most certainly that for Shanahan and Jagr. It's hard to see a scenario where they both stay Rangers for 2008-09; Jagr will almost certainly play somewhere, and Shanahan has said it's the Rangers or retirement.

They have both done wondrous work in helping to resurrect this franchise, Shanahan with his desire to play here, and only here, and then be a presence in the locker room and on the ice. Jagr's accomplishments are greater in number but somehow lessened by the expectations, which is too bad, because he should be remembered here for 54 goals and 123 points in 2005-06 rather than playing coy about coming back next year, or bristling at Renney's system.

They can have their due when this run is over. If they don't play like the sands are running down, right now, Rangers fans may not be able to look back too kindly on their time here.