Can we get a little bloodshed, already?
There has been a grand total of zero fighting majors in the last four games between the Islanders and Rangers, dating back to their last game with each other last year.
Last night was no different, though the chippiness factor was as high as it’s been in quite some time.
With the point gained in a 1-1 draw with the Rangers, the Isles moved into a tie with Tampa – tonight’s Coliseum opponent – for the No. 6 spot in the East.
“We’ve got to come out with our guns blazing,” said Garth Snow, who made 34 saves last night and took the Rangers’ best shot from Glen Sather following the game when the coach/GM fired away at the goalie’s notoriously bulky pads.
“You mean the goalie who had the illegal body parts and the wings on his shoulder pads?” Sather said when asked about Snow’s performance against his vaunted shooters. “I thought the league stopped that stuff. Obviously, he’s got some type of attachment, but he played well.”
As for the extracurricular activity between these two teams, Sather’s jab was about the only grenade tossed from one side at the other in the latest chapter of this rivalry. There was simply too much on the line last night for any of that fun stuff.
“I think you saw a really good hockey game,” said Dave Scatchard, who netted his 21st goal of the year. “There wasn’t a lot of cheap stuff going on.”
There was less yapping, spearing and carving each other up with their sticks, for sure, but both teams skated after each other all night, buzzing the nets and throwing some big-time lumber between whistles.
“We wanted the two points,” Snow said when asked if there were any disappointment in not being able to kick the Rangers a bit down the ladder. “All we did was scratch the day off the calendar.”
Brad Isbister and Alexei Kovalev rolling around on the ice for offsetting roughing calls was about the closest there was to a full-fledged punch-up. Snow absorbed a run by Matt Barnaby and they, too, wrestled. Even Eric Godard, in uniform for his first Isles-Rangers game, didn’t drop the mitts a single time.
Jason Blake had some of the usual run-ins with Eric Lindros, who was called early on for unsportsmanlike conduct when he took out Blake’s left knee after a whistle. Scatchard’s heavy first-period check knocked out Vladimir Malakhov after the Ranger defenseman had blighted Blake with an early hip check that nearly blew the roof off the Garden.
“Everyone in the league knows what I do,” the agitating Blake said of his rubbing just about everyone the wrong way.
But for the bloodthirsty, there are still two more games between the two before the season’s up.