If the Rangers were going to get a reality check after handily defeating the lowly Devils four games in a row, leave it to the Islanders.
Because after playing a team that had been dismembered at the trade deadline and whose playoff hopes are nonexistent, the Blueshirts were humbled Tuesday night at Nassau Coliseum with a 6-1 loss to an Islanders squad fighting for the top seed in the East.
Having taken two convincing wins over their New York rivals earlier in the season, the Rangers got to meet the postseason version of the Isles, whose victory pulled them even with the Capitals for first place in the division.
“They’re playoff ready,” Brendan Smith said. “And we got a little taste of that for sure.”
While the Rangers’ climb to earning a postseason bid may have gotten even more daunting — with the Bruins pulling ahead of them by six points after a win over the Sabres on Tuesday — the most concerning loss of the night was that of defenseman Jacob Trouba, who was leveled into the boards by Islanders’ heavyweight Matt Martin roughly halfway through the first period.
He was visibly rattled and struggled to get back on his skates. With the way Trouba’s head banged into the glass, it is likely he has a concussion.
Trouba, who did not return with what the team described as an upper-body injury, had been the Rangers’ main source of physicality as of late. Losing him for any amount of time, let alone the final stretch of the regular season, would be detrimental to the Rangers’ hopes of finishing strong.
“Obviously you saw the effect that had,” head coach David Quinn said of losing Trouba. “But I didn’t love what we were doing before he got hurt, either. I thought we just weren’t playing the way we needed to play if we were going to have a chance. We were sloppy, we were too high risk, too east-west.
“We weren’t playing fast enough and once Troubs went out our level of play dropped even more.”
After carrying a 3-1 lead into the third period, the Islanders blew the game open with three unanswered goals. Behind a three-point night from Josh Bailey, including two goals, the Islanders seemingly got back to their heavy style of play that had eluded them through three losses in their previous five games.
The Islanders emerged with a 1-0 lead after a first period played at playoff intensity. From the moment Trouba went to the locker room, the Rangers were clearly discombobulated.
A few shifts after a crazy sequence in which a loose puck got behind Rangers goaltender Igor Shesterkin and somehow didn’t go in, Bailey swept in a pass from J-G Pageau at 17:42 to give the Isles a 1-0 lead. Brock Nelson nearly doubled the score at the buzzer after undressing Ryan Lindgren, but hit the crossbar.
Nelson made up for it just 1:38 into the second, redirecting a feed from Nick Leddy past Shesterkin. The Rangers struggled to stay out of the penalty box early and sent the Islanders on their third power play, which Anthony Beauvillier, on his way to a four-point night, capitalized on with a one-timer for the 3-0 score just over five minutes into the middle frame.
Brendan Smith, who competed in the second period like the Rangers’ playoff hopes depended on it, ripped the shot that Kevin Rooney deflected in for their lone goal of the game.
Round 6 of the Battle of New York didn’t really feel like a battle, as this one easily belonged to the Islanders.
