Maybe you thought there was a lot of standing around in "March of the Penguins," but April of the Penguins has been fairly thick with inactivity as well, particularly the glacial portion between tomorrow night's Game 1 of the Eastern Conference semifinals and the last time we actually saw any Penguins in competitive motion, which was -- what-- Easter?

Yes, of 1999 I believe.

The good part is that for this long-awaited second round of the NHL playoffs, no one is going to accuse the Penguins of somehow conspiring to play the New York Rangers. Were any conspiracy viable, its success would have driven Michel Therrien's team to any other appointment this week, although no one will say that out loud.

"We know we can beat them," argued Jarkko Ruutu. "They've got a lot of firepower, so right now we just have to remind ourselves not to look ahead, to just worry about the first game, the first period."

But of all the potential outcomes from Pittsburgh's long week of nightly puck watching, none were as ominous from the Penguins' vantage point as the one that brings Jaromir Jagr, Martin Straka, Chris Drury, Scott Gomez, Henrik Lundqvist, et al., to the old Uptown barn tomorrow night.

The Capitals, an accidental tourist in these playoffs, were running on fumes until Philadelphia put the crusher on them in overtime Tuesday night. The Bruins' playoff credentials were suspect in the first place, and the Canadiens' top-seeded pedigree got itself called into question merely by entertaining the Bruins for the full seven games.

The Rangers, by stark contrast, represent balance, discipline, experience, hunger and just about every other conceivable menace without even mentioning Sean Avery.

"They play such good defense," said Penguins forward Petr Sykora, the first-round sniper. "When we get chances, we've got to create traffic in front of the net. You're not going to get a lot of outside goals or stuff that starts behind the net. We've got to create traffic."

You wouldn't figure a New York team to be unduly aggravated by traffic, but it appears right now to be the only way to beat Lundqvist, keeper of the New York net and fresh off a five-game dismissal of gold standard counterpart Martin Brodeur of the New Jersey Devils.

"He's big and he doesn't get caught out of position," Sidney Crosby said of King Henry after yesterday's practice. "If you get a chance to get him out of position, you've got to make it count."

The way to do that is traffic.

Have we mentioned traffic?

"You've got to put a lot of pucks on net," said forward Pascal Dupuis. "You've got to go hard through the neutral zone and you've got to attack their D so they don't come back at you with five guys."

Dupuis knows a little about this, not only because he played with the Rangers briefly last year, but also because they traded him to Atlanta and then swept him, Marian Hossa and the rest of the Thrashers out of the postseason in four games, outscoring them 17-6.

"They play well in the playoffs," Dupuis said. "You've got to find a way to match their intensity."

As it happens, there are all kinds of story lines from which the Penguins can draw varying degrees of urgency for this series, starting with the presence of Jagr in the building to which he helped bring two Stanley Cups most of a career ago. He would like few things more than dismissing these Penguins from the postseason, particularly if it's to be his last NHL act.

But this is likely to be a series that, though thick with rich personalities, turns on systems in much the way great prize fights so often hinge on styles rather than speed and power. You can expect two teams exceedingly wary of each other, even when they possess the puck.

"We're going to have to be patient with the puck," Therrien said. "We don't want to be creating turnovers. That's what they want you to do. They've got guys on defense who are young, mobile and who move the puck very well. They're there in front of Lundqvist and that makes them a good team.

"These are two teams that have been matched evenly against each other all year long."

The Rangers did a superb job asphyxiating New Jersey, but Jersey had been fairly willing to stick its head into a plastic bag all season. Not sure New York can sustain that resilience against a Penguins team that goes three lines deep with marksmen, that whipped 54 shots at Martin Gerber on one night at the Arena, that is just a little better rested and, in this analysis, just a little better.

Penguins in seven.