The New York Rangers and Islanders are coming off impressive showings against one of the league’s worst teams.
With the trade deadline rapidly approaching, the Islanders and Rangers get together for the second time in less than a week on Monday night at Madison Square Garden in New York.
The Rangers and Islanders are amongst six teams within five points of the Detroit Red Wings for the second wild-card spot in the Eastern Conference.
The Rangers are tied with the Ottawa Senators and the Boston Bruins with 64 points. The Senators have a game in hand with the Rangers and two in hand with the Bruins.
The Islanders are in a tougher situation as their 61 points puts them behind five teams with 23 games remaining.
The Rangers won both meetings this season by a combined 10-3 margin and rolled to a 5-1 victory on Tuesday in Elmont, N.Y., when they scored three times in the opening period.
Last week’s rout of the Islanders is among three wins in four games for the Rangers since an 8-2 loss to the Buffalo Sabres on Feb. 22. The Rangers bounced back from a frustrating 3-2 loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs with a 4-0 victory over the Nashville Predators on Sunday when they held a three-goal lead in the opening 40 minutes.
The Rangers improved to 14-7-3 in their past 24 games following a 4-15-0 skid, a day after trading Ryan Lindgren and Jimmy Vesey to the Colorado Avalanche. The Rangers may trade other pending unrestricted free agents such as Reilly Smith, who was held out Sunday.
So far, the Rangers have made four major trades and their biggest was adding J.T. Miller in a Jan. 31 deal with the Vancouver Canucks. Miller has six goals since the trade and scored on the power-play in the second period before Jonathan Quick made 19 of his 34 saves in the third.
“We’ll take the points right now,” said Miller, who was initially traded by the Rangers in their 2018 rebuild.
“We need them again tomorrow.”
The Islanders are coming off consecutive first-round exits with a core that includes Brock Nelson and Jean Gabriel-Pageau as unrestricted free agents.
Nelson heads into his 900th career regular-season game with three goals and five assists over his past five contests after scoring twice and adding an assist in Saturday’s 7-4 rout over the Predators that was capped by goalie Ilya Sorokin scoring an empty-net goal after the Islanders scored three times on 19 shots in the opening period.
“All these games are important for us to put as good of a run as we can together,” Nelson said.
The Islanders are 3-5-0 in their past eight games since a seven-game winning streak Jan. 18-Feb. 1 and are hoping to produce another big night after scoring seven goals for the first time since March 7. Pageau scored for only the second time in his past 20 games while Kyle Palmieri scored for the fifth time in six games.
“Those games are big at this time of the season,” Pageau said. “We want to win them.”
–Field Level Media
