CRANBERRY, Pa. -- The Rangers might have the best goaltender in the NHL.
Their transition game rivals any in the league.
And their lineup is laced with some of the game's most dynamic offensive talents.
New York clearly has a lot going for it in its first-round playoff series against the Penguins.
What it doesn't have is much playoff experience; New York's only postseason appearance in the past four years came in the qualifying round in 2020.
Conversely, if the Penguins had any more of it, their total of career playoff games could be mistaken for the national debt.
Or perhaps an even bigger number. Like, say, the Penguins' man-games lost figure for any of the past few seasons.
So while New York, which finished seven points ahead of the Penguins in the Metropolitan Division and had a 3-1 advantage in the season series, is a popular choice to win the series, the Rangers will have to prove that they can hold up in the crucible of postseason hockey, which isn't often confused with the regular-season variety.
"It's a whole different animal," Danton Heinen said after practice Sunday. "The intensity ramps up. The speed ramps up. Everything ramps up."
Heinen, it should be noted, has a relatively modest playoff resume, with 33 appearances over two seasons when he was with Boston.
He does, however, have some teammates with an ample supply.
The headliners are the trio of Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang, who have nine championship rings and 486 games of postseason experience between them.
"There isn't a more accomplished core group of players in the game than this core group that's here right now," Mike Sullivan said. "These guys are battle-tested. They've been through a lot. They've had a lot of success, but they've also had their disappointments. The experience that you gain through those can only help you in the challenges you have moving forward."
And make no mistake, New York will present some serious challenges. Getting pucks past Igor Shesterkin can be near-impossible at times, and containing the gifted likes of Artemi Panarin, Chris Kreider and Adam Fox, among others, rarely is much easier.
Still, when guys such as Jeff Carter (126) Brian Dumoulin (80) and Bryan Rust (72) are added to the mix, the Penguins have a group that has been through everything a playoff run can present.
More than a few times, in a lot of cases.
"Having guys here who have been through it many times and know what to expect, you lean on those guys and follow those guys," Heinen said.
And while the value of that experience is impossible to quantify, aside from a simple total of games-played, there's no question that being prepared for any situation that could arise should be valuable asset.
Maybe even a difference-maker in a competitive series.
"To deal with the ups-and-downs, either (in) games or shifts or periods, you have to be able to stay calm and focus on what you have to do," Letang said. "Make sure you don't get carried away with the crowd or penalties or power plays and all kinds of stuff. Managing emotions, stuff like that, controlling the game, that's the biggest advantage."
Of course, if players in their mid-30s, as Crosby, Malkin, Letang, Carter and Brian Boyle are, thrive in the playoffs, they are experienced; if not, they are just old.
Regardless, no one disputes that the Rangers' future is more promising than that of the Penguins -- if anything, New York is a year or two ahead of most projections in its development into a serious contender -- but all that the Penguins have gone through during their previous 15 playoff runs should work to their benefit during the opening round.
"Experience can be very helpful," Sullivan said. "And there aren't too many teams that have more playoff experience than this one. That's a credit to the core group of players who have been here and played in so many high-stakes environments and excelled in that (setting).
"It gives our guys a certain perspective. There haven't been too many experiences in a playoff environment that they haven't been through. They can draw on those experiences to help us react the right way to the ebbs and flows of a game or a series or whatever may come our way."
