GREENBURGH, N.Y. -- They're different, of course, but you don't have to stretch too far to find some comparisons between the New York Rangers of this season to the Boston Bruins of last season.
Each won the Presidents' Trophy, awarded to the team with the best record in the NHL.
Each set team records for wins and points in a regular season; Boston set NHL records last season with 65 wins and 135 points; New York set team records with 55 wins and 114 points.
The Bruins were and the Rangers are expected to at least get through the Eastern Conference First Round.
"Different situation," Rangers forward Jimmy Vesey said.
The Bruins did not get through the first round last season, losing in seven games to the Florida Panthers, fueling the notion that perhaps there really is a Presidents' Trophy curse.
The Rangers, preparing to play Game 1 of the best-of-7 first round against the Washington Capitals at Madison Square Garden on Sunday (3 p.m. ET; MNMT, ESPN, MSG, SN, TVAS), don't concur.
"It seems like last year [the Bruins] were the Presidents' Trophy winner as of January," Vesey said, "but we had to play down to game 82 and we played a lot of teams down the stretch that were either really good teams or fighting for their lives.
"In general, I feel like sometimes the Presidents' Trophy team, you look at that team as head and shoulders above the rest of the League, but I look around the League and there's tough matchups anywhere you look."
Though the Bruins might be the cautionary tale, and the history of Presidents' Trophy winners shouldn't exactly excite the Rangers (eight of the previous 37 winners won the Stanley Cup; seven lost in the first round), winning it this season was no small feat.
Ten teams had at least 102 points, eight had at least 50 wins. The Rangers had to come back against the New York Islanders in their 81st game at a time the Islanders were still fighting for a playoff berth -- winning 3-2 in a shootout on April 13 after trailing 2-1 -- and then defeat the Ottawa Senators 4-0 in game 82 to lock it up.
The Carolina Hurricanes were right behind them the whole way; a stumble in those last two games could have meant not only losing out on the Presidents' Trophy but also dropping to second place in the Metropolitan Division.
"I think we should embrace being the Presidents' Trophy champions," Vesey said. "This franchise has been around 98 years and we just set the record for wins and points in a season, so I think we should embrace it. I think we should have more confidence with that."
But they do not believe it should lead to any more pressure being on them.
"If we had finished one point behind the Presidents' Trophy, I don't know if the pressure changes," coach Peter Laviolette said.
Do the expectations the Rangers have for themselves -- and those from the outside -- change because they won the Presidents' Trophy?
It did for the Bruins, who last season went into the playoffs as the heavy favorite to win the Stanley Cup.
"I don't think it's any different from anything else, you do something well, then you're expected to keep doing well," center Mika Zibanejad said. "As a team, as an individual, it doesn't really matter. This is more of a question for what other people think and what other people have in mind.
"Personally, I've never been in this situation, I've never won the Presidents' Trophy before, but I think we found something and we've done something that over 82 games worked for us and brought us success. Obviously, a lot of hard work with it. For us to change that now, I don't think that's even up for question or discussion. We just have to keep going with the things that we've been doing well, the habits we've created, the identity of our team, what we've been creating all year."
The Rangers battling through their 82nd game to win the Presidents' Trophy could be a benefit heading into the playoffs; they faced teams that had to win to stay in the race, including the Islanders (twice), Philadelphia Flyers, Detroit Red Wings and Pittsburgh Penguins in the last 15 days of the regular season.
In fact, defenseman Jacob Trouba said going down 3-0 in the first period against the Islanders on April 9 on the way to a 4-2 loss helped the Rangers better understand the level they needed to reach to win the Presidents' Trophy.
"It's very hard to be in that mindset and be prepared to that level when you're not in that situation," Trouba said. "I think we learned something in that period and I thought we played better the rest of that game knowing that's the level we have to be at. Down the stretch we played desperate teams and we had to raise the level of our game to play that style. I think we did. Going into the playoffs that's going to help us that we've been there, we've been playing meaningful hockey."
The Bruins weren't doing that late last season. They won the Presidents' Trophy on March 30, their 75th game. They had seven games across two weeks of games that essentially meant nothing.
Boston found the level it needed to reach in Game 1 against the Panthers and held a 3-1 lead in the best-of-7 series after Game 4, but it did not react well after a 4-3 overtime loss in Game 5.
The Bruins lost 7-5 in Game 6 and Florida came back from a one-goal deficit to win 4-3 in overtime in Game 7.
"When you're playing a team that's got six young guys in the lineup or you're resting three or four guys, I mean it’s a privilege to play in the NHL, but sometimes that can lead to a little bit of pond hockey," Vesey said. "We're battle-tested at this point. We've been through adversity. We played teams that were playing for their lives. Those are the toughest games you're going to play, against a team fighting to get into the playoffs or a team on the brink of elimination.
"We've been through adversity, we're ready and we're just excited for Sunday."
