Rangers 5
Isles 0
On the same night Bryan Trottier was booed at the Coliseum, the chants of “Potvin [stinks]” shook the building to its rusty, crusty foundation.
The Rangers and Islanders clashed twice during pre-game warmups when Matthew Barnaby railed Jason Blake at the red line, touching off a 40-man gauntlet of shoulder pads and sticks. They pushed, they shoved, slashed and cursed each other out until they were blue in the face, and Eric Cairns and Sandy McCarthy nearly came to blows right there.
But the only real beating last night was the one the Rangers issued the fawn-like Islanders in a 5-0 victory.
“They made us look pretty bad out there,” Kenny Jonsson said.
Trottier was booed for the first time in the history of the Islander franchise that he helped win four Stanley Cups 20 years ago as he made his maiden trek to the Coliseum as head coach of the Isles’ most hated rivals. But as the game wore on and the Rangers wore down their opponents, the boos slowly were aimed at the home team’s inept power play and poor, untimely neutral-zone turnovers.
But most infuriating of all was the Islanders’ failure to show up for a game that moved the Rangers to within two points of them in the standings.
Barnaby scored two goals by winning battles to loose pucks. His first score came off an Alexei Yashin turnover and his second came just 38 seconds into the second period when he hustled to slip past Roman Hamrlik for a breakaway goal and a 3-0 lead.
The sloppiness in the Islanders’ zone was mortifying, given the magnitude of this already-fierce series. Passes went across their own goalmouth early on and the Isles allowed the Rangers to not only fly past them on the attack, but also push them around and beat them up much as the Leafs did last spring.
Michael Peca was sent face-first into the glass on an unpenalized hit from behind by Boris Mironov. Chris Osgood (sprained ankle) was knocked out by Bobby Holik, who crashed the net in the third period, sending the goalie home on a pair of crutches. Oleg Kvasha was blighted at center ice on a moving pick by a gnarly Eric Lindros. Cairns (dislocated shoulder) also was helped off the ice after a vicious check in the final minutes.
All of them were laid out on the ice like dirty laundry in an otherwise ho-hum battle, not withstanding the several whacks and slashes that happened any time two opposing players were within a stick’s distance of each other.
And in the end, it was the Islanders’ third shutout loss to an Atlantic Division rival in the last two weeks. In those games they been outscored by a ghastly 14-0.
With five minutes left in the third, the Coliseum was filled with only Ranger fans, who whistled with delight at their Potvin chants, primarily because all of the Islander fans had already left the building.
“The game was embarrassing enough, let alone what happened in the crowd,” Mark Parrish said.