Why the Rangers Will Make the Playoffs -- The Penalty Killers
Blair Betts is The Man
Posted on Thursday, April 2, 2009 at 2:50 PMAn enemy power play can devastate a hockey club.
Ask the New Jersey Devils; they can tell you all about it. They once had a formidable penalty-killing unit in John Madden and Jay Pandolfo who helped them to a couple of Stanley Cups, but that was a few years back.
In recent years, the Jay-and-John duet has been noticeably less effective and other PK's around the league have taken center stage.
None, however, can match the Rangers' premier pair of Blair Betts and Fred Sjostrom. Their effectiveness down the homestretch is yet another reason why The Maven believes that the Rangers will make the playoffs.
When I dropped over to the Rangers training complex in Greenburgh, NY on Wednesday, I went over to Betts' dressing room stall to congratulate him on being a finalist for the Bill Masterton Trophy for "the player who best exemplifies the qualities of perseverance, sportsmanship and dedication to hockey."
We got to talking about penalty-killing over the years and I mentioned to the Edmonton native that he and Freddie S remind me of some of the all-time outstanding PK units of yesteryear.
The two best units I've ever seen start with the Toronto Maple Leafs combination of Nick Metz and Joe Klukay, who teamed up for a pair of Stanley Cups in 1946-47 and 1947-48. After Metz retired, Klukay continued to excel with an assortment of partners.
The other outstanding unit played for the Cup-winning Boston Bruins in 1970 and again in 1972. Ed Westfall, who later captained the early New York Islanders teams, and Derek Sanderson – eventually a Ranger – were as good as you could find in the immediate post-expansion era.
Like Metz-Klukay, Sanderson-Westfall proved to be excellent forecheckers and each of the duet had better-than average scoring ability.
"More than any of them," I told Betts, "you remind me of Klukay."
The similarity is in size and style. The difference is in shot-blocking, which is more in vogue now than when Joe K roamed the ice for Toronto.
Betts has an astonishing ability to divine passes that the foe is about to attempt and is fearless when it comes to blocking shots. His sidekick, Sjostrom, is as speedy as any NHL skater and owns excellent offensive weapons to go with his defensive savvy. Perhaps most important is the fact that their chemistry is high-grade. Each reads off the other as if they have extra-sensory perception.
No less valuable is coach John Tortorella's ability to use a second unit of, say Ryan Callahan or even Scott Gomez who has the tools to rag the puck as long as anyone.
Rangers fans appreciate the penalty-killing value and the job performed by Betts-Sjostrom in particular. One of the balcony Faithful, Shaya (Cy) Tenenbaum, offers this explanation of his adoration for the pair.
"They have a tremendous ability to sense where the play is heading and put themselves in position to block a shot or intercept a pass," says Tenenbaum. "When they have the puck – they don't just clear it all the way down the ice – they play it out of the zone and create shorthanded opportunities. That takes a lot more time off the clock and can swing momentum and flow of the game even while the other club has the man advantage."
Needless to say, it takes more than penalty-killing to win games.
Next on the agenda will be improving the power play.
But if the Blueshirts are to make the playoffs, the PK must remain one of the NHL's best.
I believe it will.
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