Boy, it has been awhile since one of these. Actually, it will have been 72 days since the Rangers and Islanders played before they meet again Thursday night at Barclays Center.
And goodness, how things have changed since the second game of this four-game regular-season set, a rather dull 4-2 Islanders victory in Brooklyn on Dec. 6.
First, tensions between the Islanders organization and their second-year Brooklyn home have continued to sour, and as the team spent most of the first three months of the season occupying the cellar of the standings, on Jan. 17 they decided to fire their long-tenured coach, Jack Capuano. Interim coach Doug Weight took over and turned things around, going 8-3-2 to get his team to within striking distance of the East’s second wild-card spot.
“They’re putting some wins together and making a push to get back in the playoffs,” Rangers defenseman Marc Staal said after Wednesday’s practice. “Their intensity, their work ethic to be a team that’s desperate, it’s noticeable.”
The Islanders’ worst loss of the Weight era just happened to come on Tuesday night, when they were hammered in Toronto, losing 7-1. It put them three points behind the Maple Leafs for that second wild-card spot.
Yet the Rangers, who are comfortably in the first wild-card spot and pushing to move up in the cutthroat Metropolitan Division, only thought the Islanders’ recent loss was going to stoke a flame of motivation — as if they needed one with their hated cross-river rivals coming into their rink.
“They had a tough loss the other night,” Rangers goalie Henrik Lundqvist said. “So they’re going to come hard against us at home, we’ll just have to prepare for it.”
Meanwhile, Lundqvist and his Blueshirts have been through their own series of ups and downs since they last saw the Isles. The franchise netminder will return to his crease after sitting in place of understudy Antti Raanta for the team’s 3-2 win over the Blue Jackets in Columbus on Monday. It was the Rangers’ sixth straight victory, now 9-2-0 in their previous 11 as Lundqvist had backstopped all of those before Columbus.
“It was good for me to get a lot of games and get going,” Lundqvist said. “I just feel more relaxed, I feel like it’s easier to find the right focus when you play a lot. That’s what I’m used to. It was a good stretch for me.”
When Lundqvist was a rookie, the Rangers and Islanders would play eight times a season. Now, they play only two teams in the division five times per season, while they play the other five teams just four times. This has allowed every team in the league to play each other at least twice, every team visiting every rink at least once.
“I think it was a good change to make sure we play every team twice,” Lundqvist said. “I think that was important to make sure we always go to the West Coast, and they come here. I think that was a good change, instead of playing your own division, play them seven or eight times.”
Yet it might have diluted these rivalries a little bit. When it was every other week these teams were playing, it had such an effect on the standings, and that’s when the bad blood began to boil. Now? Not so much.
“It’s more when you play a team often, that’s when you really react to it,” Lundqvist said. “You don’t really walk around thinking about teams you haven’t played.”
Which is certainly not to say that this will be a game lacking intensity. The stands will be packed with Rangers fans, and the supporting chants for the road and home teams will be alternating in sing-song, as always.
And it might not be the same home-rink advantage as it was when the Coliseum on Long Island was crumbling around the fans and the players, but it should be a fun one regardless.
“Maybe not quite the same atmosphere [after] the change in arenas,” Rangers captain Ryan McDonagh said, “but still, as soon as the puck is dropped, it seems like it’s a tight-matched game. It always ends up being exciting.”