Rangers Recap: Islanders play spoiler

The Rangers franchise setting win was not to be won last night against the Islanders. A rugged and tough contested game that had the Rangers on their heels in the first period, the Blueshirts were able to make a game of it in the second and third periods with a pair of power play goals. It wasn’t enough in a 4-2 loss.

The officials choosing to swallow the whistles after a horrendous hit from behind probably doesn’t change the outcome of this game, but it needs to be mentioned. Vincent Trocheck was rightly livid and gave Kelly Sutherland an absolute earful after getting crunched from behind into the boards. Thankfully, he did not sustain an injury.

Blaming the loss on the refs is a fool’s errand. The Rangers can’t go down 3-0 in the first period and expect to win. However, I don’t know what Kelly Sutherland was watching on Noah Dobson hit on Trocheck, a good 5 or 6 feet from the boards and square in the numbers, and didn’t get called for a boarding call. He’s looking right at the play, and decides to eat the whistle for…reasons?

I will never understand officiating and the “game management” angle of sports. This has nothing to do with game management. It was a dangerous hit that should have been called. Peter Laviolette said about everything he could without getting fined in his postgame presser. And yet that’s the thing, Laviolette shouldn’t even get fined for being mad at the officials.

As for the game, a loss is a loss and the Rangers can’t win them all, so let’s focus on some positives. The power play has returned to its early season dominance. The man advantage got the Rangers back into the game and gave a boost to the entire team.

Chris Kreider has been the main beneficiary of the powerplay’s resurgence. Five of his last six goals have been power play deflections as he continues to climb up the all time Rangers power play leaderboard. He’s a huge playoff performer, so Kreider getting hot heading into the playoffs bodes well for the Blueshirts.

With an assist on the second power play goal, Trocheck surpassed his career high in points (76) on the season. Penciled in as the 3C with a healthy Filip Chytil, Trocheck has certainly proved he’s a bargain at $5.625 million a year and has been a perfect complement for Artemi Panarin and Alexis Lafrenière. He is also proving to be a solid bumper on the 1-3-1 power play.

Part of the winning formula for the Rangers is for their power play to either get them into a game, or put away a game. It’s going to be interesting to see what happens in the playoffs this time around with the man advantage.

In the end though, it was a bad first period and a shooting gallery against Igor Shesterkin that cost them the game. The normal in-game adjustments came, but it wasn’t enough to overcome the three goal deficit. The Rangers threw everything they could at Semyon Varlomov in the second and third periods, but he was up to the task.

Despite the annoying loss, I think a little adversity is a good thing before the playoffs. The Rangers aren’t going to go undefeated in the playoffs, there’s going to be ebbs and flows, and much like in the regular season, I think the Rangers will use losses as learning experiences before some runs of 2 or 3 wins in a row.