Rangers' Ryan Lindgren says playing more physical may slow down Devils in Game 6

In a long playoff series such as the one the Rangers and Devils have been in the last two weeks, teams make adjustments to what the opposing team is doing well against them.

So for the Rangers, down 3-2 and facing elimination in Game 6 Saturday night at Madison Square Garden, the challenge was to figure out what kind of adjustments to make to counter the blazing speed the Devils had used to help win the last three games.

They could try to play more physical hockey, maybe. And hard-hitting defenseman Ryan Lindgren was on board with that plan.

“Yeah, I think that's key,’’ Lindgren said Saturday morning. “I think being physical, playing on the edge, that's going to benefit us. They're a skilled team. They're not overly physical. So I think if we provide that, we provide that physicality, I think that's going to go well for us.

“You don't want to be taking dumb penalties, putting them on the power play, but I think playing with that edge, doing what you can to slow them down and bump them, and throw hits on them when you can, is going to be huge.’’

Despite having hitters Lindgren, Jacob Trouba (whose 29 hits through the series’ first five games were tied for second in the league), Braden Schneider and Niko Mikkola on defense, the Rangers aren’t built to be the most physical of teams. Over the course of the season, they traded physical forwards Ryan Reaves and Sammy Blais, who did a lot of body-banging on the forecheck.

The current fourth line of Jimmy Vesey, Barclay Goodrow and Tyler Motte is faster and more offensively capable than the group of Reaves, Blais and Ryan Carpenter, who were the fourth line at the start of the season. But on the current fourth line, only Goodrow could really be considered a physical player. And on the top three lines, Alexis Lafrenière is really the only player who consistently takes the body as part of his game.

Matching up against the speedy Devils in the first round, physicality never seemed as if it would be an issue.

“Going into it, I didn't think it was going to be overly physical,’’ Lindgren said. “You look at other series, like in Minnesota-Dallas, you knew going into that series that was going to be physical. But you look at this one, you knew it was the playoffs, you knew there would be some of that, but I don't think… we thought (physicality) was going to be a huge thing.

“But I think that it's something that we can bring, and I think that helps us if we do that.’’

After winning the first two games of the series, both by 5-1 scores, then losing three straight (and being outscored 7-1 in the last two) the Rangers were left to figure out a way to halt the Devils’ momentum in Game 6.

Besides increasing the physicality, one other way thing they talked about was getting bodies to the front of the net against the 22-year-old goalie Akira Schmid, who has won three straight and stopped 82 of 84 shots in those games. As much as they talked about doing that after Game 3, they weren’t able to do it in Games 4 and 5.

And they were still talking about it Saturday morning, before Game 6.

“I think we can do much better job in that area,’’ Goodrow said. “Just making life more difficult for him and seeing pucks, try to get to rebounds, being around the crease and not making his life too easy.’’

What would probably help, too, would be to fire more shots at Schmid, who had to make only two saves in the third period of Game 5.

“I think a point of emphasis for us is we’ve got to get more pucks and bodies (to the net),’’ Schneider said. “Their guy (Schmid) has come in and has done a great job at doing what he needs to do to help them win, and I think we need to do a better job of making it harder for him. I think we can get more bodies there and more pucks there in general, and frustrate him a little bit, and give ourselves a chance to bang some home.’’

By Colin Stephenson

colin.stephenson@newsday.comColinSNewsday

Colin Stephenson covers the Rangers for Newsday. He has spent more than two decades covering the NHL and just about every sports team in the New York metropolitan area.