As I have said many times before, it's easy in sports to go from bad to good. We see yearly turnarounds of teams in all sports. Horrible one year and then all of a sudden challenging for the playoffs the next year.  Its the nature of the game.  

However, it is EXTREMELY difficult to then go from good to great. This is where the Rangers have been stuck for the past 9 years. They went from a really bad team who missed the playoffs for 7 straight seasons, (1998-2005) to a team that has now made the playoffs in 8 of the past 9 seasons. However, while most consider the Rangers to be a good team, they are not considered an elite team. To the contrary, the Penguins are considered an elite team and a serious Stanley Cup contender. If the Rangers could ever knock them off, they would take a huge step forward.

- Modified on 5/2/2014 2:58:41 PM

-- Modified on 5/2/2014 3:08:22 PM