The Rangers keep rolling.
The Islanders keep roiling.
What else did you expect for this renewal of hostilities on Sunday afternoon at The Garden?
It is rare that a hockey game goes pretty much how you would expect, but both teams played almost exactly to their profiles in this 5-2 Rangers win over the Islanders, the first Battle of New York this season.
Igor Shesterkin makes a save during the Rangers’ win against the Islanders on Nov. 3.
The Rangers, with new-look forward lines that featured a separated Mika Zibanejad and Chris Kreider, played excellent special teams and were a tad too loose at five-on-five, ceding possession time and relying too much on Igor Shesterkin against the shorthanded Islanders.
The Islanders, down the entire left-hand side of their blue line along with Mat Barzal and Anthony Duclair, played well below the hashes in their offensive zone and had a surprising amount of puck possession.
But they were typically disastrous on special teams, and the banged up defense corps handed the Rangers a freebie to boot.
Chris Kreider (l.) celebrates his goal during the Rangers’ win against the Islanders on Nov. 3.
At this point, you can hear the ever-optimistic Patrick Roy talking about how well the Islanders are playing long before he gets in front of cameras postgame — “I thought everybody played well,” he said — and in fairness to the head coach, this was a gutsy and gritty performance by a severely outmanned club.
But guts, grit and LIRR fare will buy the Islanders a train ride back home from Penn Station and nothing more.
What they need are wins and standings points, and of those they got none on Sunday.
The Rangers celebrate after Artemi Panarin scored during their win against the Islanders on Nov. 3.
The Rangers, now 8-2-1, are in a better position to concern themselves with less tangible matters, and can find plenty about this game to fret about if they so choose.
All the same issues that have been evident throughout this start to the season in which Shesterkin’s brilliance has overshadowed just about everything else were still there.
It was no solace to the visitors.
“Was he good? Yeah he was,” Rangers coach Peter Laviolette said of Shesterkin. “But not like three of the last four games, where it just felt like it’s just kinda one-sided. I felt like we were punching and punching. We’re gonna get punched once in a while, too. But overall I thought it was a much better performance both defensively and offensively.”
Particularly to the Islanders, it seems, hockey is cruel and its cruelty abounded at the four-minute mark of the third when, after a successful penalty kill, Bo Horvat was in for what seemed a sure-thing rush chance at the backdoor to tie the game, only to be stopped by Shesterkin on the best of his 35 saves.
Just 1:16 later, the Rangers got the sort of bounce that 8-2-1 teams get, when Braden Schneider’s shot popped up off the stick of Adam Edstrom, looped over Ilya Sorokin’s head and crossed the goal line for all of a millisecond — enough to make what was nearly 3-3 into 4-2.
“I tried to make the same move as I did last game [on a goal against the Sabres] and obviously he stayed right with me,” Horvat said. “I didn’t fake it enough like in the previous game.”
The Rangers celebrate after Vincent Trocheck scored during their win against the Islanders on Nov. 3.
Artemi Panarin added the empty-netter to make it 5-2.
The Rangers had built an early 2-0 lead off Chris Kreider’s shorthanded goal and Samuel Bolduc’s defensive zone turnover that resulted in a Vincent Trocheck goal before Casey Cizikas cut it in half by 4:38 into the second.
Then a lengthy special teams sequence appeared to put the game out of reach for the visitors.
Casey Cizikas (53) celebrates his goal during the Islanders’ loss to the Rangers on Nov. 3.
What started with consecutive Rangers penalties that handed the Islanders a 36-second five-on-three ended not only without an Islander goal, but — somehow — in a Rangers five-on-three of their very own.
While that came and went, Panarin converted on the ensuing five-on-four with a seeing-eye shot from the blue line to make it 3-1.
“We need to find a way to score power-play [goals],” Ryan Pulock told The Post, the Islanders ultimately going 0-for-5 at five-on-four. “It’s such a crucial part of the game and I think we just haven’t been able to consistently create and consistently get chances there. We gotta find a way to be a little better in that area.”
Before the second period finished, Brock Nelson offered some hope to the Islanders by scoring on Kyle Palmieri’s cross-crease feed with just eight seconds to go before intermission.
But that was as close as they’d get.
For the Rangers, that is called buying more time to work out their problems.
For the Islanders, it is called being swallowed up by theirs yet again.
