Bantering Points: 4/6/17

After falling to the Washington Capitals last night, the Rangers are down to only two games left before the playoffs. While New York is locked into a first round visit to Montreal, they could play spoiler in the final two games of the season against an Ottawa Senators teams that is yet to officially clinch their playoff berth, as well as the Penguins as they remain in a dogfight for home ice against the Columbus Blue Jackets in the first round. Here are today's news and links:

Rangers News:

• Highlights: WSH 2, NYR 0 (4:32 Video via NHL.com)
• Game Recap: Another year, another Presidents' Trophy win for the Capitals as they look primed to walk into the Stanley Cup Finals relatively unopposed (CBS)
• Larry Brooks breaks down what the Rangers must do in order to knock off the Montreal Canadiens in the team's opening round playoff series (NY Post)
• Scott Charles offers thoughts on last night's 2-0 defeat at the Verizon Center (Blueshirt Bulletin)
• Garrett Gartino highlights a couple of reasons to be worried about Henrik Lundqvist as he gets set to square off against Carey Price next week (Blue Line Station)
• Ben Whitney compares Michael Grabner with Canadiens' forward Paul Byron, and shows how similar the two players are (Blue Line Station)
• Postgame Notes: Brandon Pirri made his return to the lineup known, as he threw three hits and won 85.7% of his faceoffs en route to being robbed of the first star of the game (Official Team Site)
• Postgame Interviews: Henrik Lundqvist,(3:04) Alain Vigneault,(1:43) and Derek Stepan (1:19) /

Around the NHL:

• Elliotte Friedman authors another edition of 30 Thoughts (Sportsnet)
• Pierre LeBrun chatted with former Dallas Stars' forward Jaromir Jagr about how he's stayed in such great shape, and whether is serious about his ambitions to play until he turns 50 years old (TSN)
• Josh Cooper reports that Buffalo Sabres' forward Kyle Okposo has been shut down for the season after being hospitalized with an illness (Puck Daddy)
• Matt Larkin examines who could find themselves on the Canadian Olympic team in 2018 with NHLer's now out of the running for the most part (The Hockey News)
• hockeypassingstats tries to identify individual playing styles through clustering (Hockey Graphs)/