by Larry Leavitt

NY Rangers @ Los Angeles: Who’s got the easier schedule? Obviously the Rangers closed out early and are getting healthy while the Kings were in Chicago for their game seven and playing the Chicago Blackhawks during their down time. So if you give the tilt of the scales towards the health side to the Rangers as they’ve been resting and relaxing waiting to find out who beat up each other.

The Kings just completed their third game seven that they won all on the road, their used to this amount of play. The Blackhawks are a very physical team and it didn’t seem like anyone got overly hurt. Of the Hawks and Kings it looked like the Kings were the ones who got the worst of the hits.

The one who got the worst hit was the Kings Drew Doughty, he might have actually reinjured his shoulder. Doughty kept playing but that would be the question mark would Doughty be healthy enough to continue this series? He’s going to play no matter what but don’t be surprised afterwards if he had a shoulder separation or something that was wrong with his shoulder which happened at the end of the season.

The first game will be played Wednesday night at Staples Center in L.A. and the Kings have a tremendous crowd, they’ll be loud, and pulling for the Kings.The Kings are in one of the bigger markets in the U.S. L.A. which behind New York at number two. This is what the NHL wanted as far as getting people to watch and having two big names in it. Most people would say that the west coast teams have the tougher competition and therefore had to go through a lot more to get to the finals.

The Kings in this instance would have the edge as far as their level of play, but those New York Rangers you can’t count them out they’re a good team. The Rangers are peaking at the right time and their playing real well together. It’s a team sport and they are playing well together and are doing the right things.

If you were going to pick who was going to make it on goaltending alone the Rangers Hendrik Lundqvist has been really hot lately and the Kings goalie Jonathan Quick has let some mediocre goals go in and they’ve been really bad. He’s had some good games but not as his standards have been.

Regarding overtime, it’s funny in series one, two and three, you see somebody have a lot of pressure on the offensive zone and your not really worried about it because they got time to react and to recover. Overtime is sudden death and as soon as the goal goes in it’s over. Every time a team was on offensive you were glued to the set because this could be the play.

The Blackhawks looked like they had more offensive zone timing than the Kings did but the Kings got the lucky break and you have to feel sorry for the Hawks goalie Corey Crawford it was not that he couldn’t see the puck. It was deflected in, and he was playing the shot and it got deflected off one of his own players. It happens it’s not Crawford’s fault but it got L.A. into the finals.

Larry Leavitt is covering the NHL Stanley Cup Finals for http://www.sportsradioservice.com