What Rangers can learn from Avalanche, Lightning rosters

You’d like the rate of progression to be linear, the way it was for the Devils when they won their first Stanley Cup in 1995, a year after their excruciating seven-game loss to the Rangers in the conference finals.

That is understandable.

You’d like to skip the heartbreak associated with the more likely route to hoisting the chalice — a succession of false starts, steps forward followed immediately by a couple of more steps back.

You’d like to speed the process.