This was their sixth game in nine days since the trade deadline. It’s been a playoff-type schedule, even more grueling with two sets of back-of-backs within seven days.
And the Rangers responded as they have just about all season with Sunday’s dominant 5-2 victory over the allegedly desperate Islanders for their fifth victory in those six contests that lifted them to within one point of the first-overall Bruins.
The Blueshirts worked the walls. They won their one-on-ones. They were relentless below the hash marks — cycling, going low-high and high-low within possessions to create open ice while establishing a substantial territorial advantage. Indeed, the Rangers imposed their will on the Islanders while demonstrating a playoff-style approach.
“We are thinking and we are playing the way we want to in the playoffs,” Artemi Panarin told The Post after notching his 94th point on an assist setting up Alexis Lafreniere. “That’s right now, because you can’t just change at the last second.
“But we have to focus on the regular season too. We have to finish the job and not get ahead of ourselves. We still have work to do.”
The Rangers opened the season on an 18-4-1 tear and are now in the midst of a 16-3-1 surge. They have received superior netminding from both Igor Shesterkin, who faced 27 shots in this one, and Jonathan Quick. And they are getting contributions straight down the lineup after a pair of holes up front were filled with deadline acquisitions Alex Wennberg and Jack Roslovic.
They come at you 12 deep now, even with two of their original top-nine — Filip Chytil and Blake Wheeler — down for the count. They come at you with three blue-line tandems, even if Jacob Trouba has been sidelined for each of these last six games and Ryan Lindgren went down with a left leg injury late in the second period that did not look good at all.
“Our depth … we have so much depth, every line, it’s tough to play against,” Vincent Trocheck told The Post when asked what he likes most about his team. “That’s just so important going into the playoffs, and even on the defense side now, we had Troubs go down, Lindy go down and we didn’t miss a beat.”
Adam Fox is playing up to his Norris credentials and has been for weeks. K’Andre Miller and Braden Schneider have both blossomed since being paired in the wake of the captain’s absence. Zac Jones has steadily improved. Still, losing two of the top four presents a challenge
Trouba is going to be out for up to another two weeks with a lower-body matter. Lindgren was unable to put weight on his left foot when helped off the ice after coming together with Jean-Gabriel Pageau behind Shesterkin’s net. It didn’t look good, though it did not look as terrible as when Wheeler went down around that same area about a month ago.
Chad Ruhwedel, a righty scratched for the last six games after his deadline acquisition from Pittsburgh, will step in for Lindgren if No. 55 is sidelined. AHL Hartford’s Connor Mackey, a physically inclined lefty who delivered an impactful performance subbing for an injured Lindgren in Ottawa on Jan. 27, has been sidelined a month with an upper-body issue and is classified, “week-to-week.”
Head coach Peter Laviolette will, however, have a personnel decision to make up front for Tuesday night’s match at the Garden against seventh-overall Winnipeg when Matt Rempe will be eligible to return after serving his four-game suspension for elbowing Jonas Siegenthaler last Monday.
Until Sunday, it appeared just about automatic that Rempe would reclaim his spot on the fourth line with Barclay Goodrow and Jimmy Vesey with Wennberg centering third-line wingers Will Cuylle and Kaapo Kakko and Jonny Brodzinski returning to the healthy scratch status he wore for two games before Rempe was suspended.
But Laviolette flipped Cuylle and Vesey against the Islanders, the coach saying that he wanted to use Cuylle-Goodrow-Vesey as a matchup line. The match instead turned into a showcase for the third line that was keyed by Brodzinski’s speed and recorded three goals — one apiece for each — after owning battle zones and tight spaces.
And so it will be interesting whether Rempe is immediately restored to active duty. If so, it will be equally interesting to see whether Brodzinski — whose deflection in front broke a 2-2 tie late in the second — or Cuylle — who had beaten Ilya Sorokin from the left circle midway through the session — sits out. Cuylle, by the way, has not been a healthy scratch all season.
It is, of course, about team, never more so than at this time of year when the postseason comes into view. Again, though, the Rangers can’t get ahead of themselves, not with the schedule this week featuring Winnipeg at MSG on Tuesday, the Bruins in Boston on Thursday and the Panthers on Broadway on Saturday.
The team, of course, is a collection of people. And it’s the quality of the people in the Rangers room that Panarin appreciates as the Blueshirts’ greatest asset.
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