New York Ranger’s Henrik Lundquivst needs to wake up from Nightmare

(Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)

For the first time in his 107-game playoff career, Rangers goaltender Henrik Lundqvist had allowed as many as five goals in consecutive games, surrendering six in this 6-5 Game 3 defeat Wednesday just as he had on Monday at Madison Square Garden in the Blueshirts’ 6-2 defeat.

For the first time in 30 years, the Rangers had lost a playoff game in which they had scored as many as five goals. For an offense that has been struggling to find the back of the net this playoffs, you would think that five goals would be enough. The Rangers backbone is now the one that needs to pick it up as the numbers say he does. Against the Tampa Bay Lightning the Rangers are 1-5 and Lundquivst is supporting a 4.55 goals against average while holding a .840 save percentage.

Rangers fans are not accustom to seeing numbers like this from there so called “King” and it is important that Friday night in Tampa the Rangers play a complete game and even the series.

Another issue the Rangers seem to be facing is the disappearance of their stars. Meanwhile, though the Rangers did scrap and scrape to beat Ben Bishop five times in erasing a 4-2 second-period deficit before getting one from Dan Boyle at 18:04 of the third to send the game into OT after having fallen behind 3:59 earlier. They got nothing from Rick Nash and nothing from Marty St. Louis, both of whom were invisible.

Friday night is a so called “must win” for New York and the Rangers know that in order to get back on track and even the series they need their backbone and their king to find his crown.