Larry Brooks

Larry Brooks

NHL

Islanders miles behind Rangers in stature (but not on ice)

So here we are again in this rivalry cycle between the Rangers and Islanders in which the out-of-towners appear on the verge of surpassing the boys from the big city in theoretical NHL rankings and the standings, if not in measure of franchise popularity or importance.

It’s never been that with these two teams, not even through the glorious dynasty on the Island of 1980-83 that is both the equal of anything any hockey team has ever accomplished and the equal to anything any of our New York teams has ever achieved, including the 1936-39, 1949-53 and 1996-2000 Yankees.

The Rangers’ pull is simply too rooted in history, even if rooting for a Stanley Cup from this franchise is one of the great exercises in futility in sports history. One season — one Game 6 at the Meadowlands, one double-overtime goal in the ensuing Game 7 — is what separates our Broadway Blueshirts from being the Cleveland Indians or the Detroit Lions or some such godforsaken club that hasn’t won a championship since Gramps was in elementary school.

Still, they are the Rangers. They are an Original Six, which just happens to be the most romantic designation in all of pro sports, and how much cash do you think the NFL would pony up in order to slap that trademark identity onto their licensed products?

And, in the Success-is-Relative, What-Have-You-Done-for-Us-Lately Department, the Rangers also have finished ahead of the Islanders eight straight seasons — by as much as 34 points in 2008-09 and as few as one point in 2012-13 — and 15 of the last 19 years.

The Islanders do seem poised to leapfrog the Rangers on the ice this season. Years of selecting toward the top of the draft have reached fruition. Patience for the most part in developing prospects is yielding dividends.

There is a long, long way from youthful potential and a first-round defeat to an established standard of excellence and championships, longer than it takes to travel from Uniondale to Brooklyn by car, if you include parking.

Even Garth Snow, the GM of the Islanders, seems to have recognized that by pulling off the Thomas Vanek for Matt Moulson-plus deal that delivered the twin, almost competing, messages that his team was both going for it and not doing well enough at all to stand pat.

The Rangers have been pretty much terrible prior to Tuesday’s match at the Coliseum in scoring a sum of 15 goals while winning three of their first 10 games, but the Islanders themselves had only won four of their first 11, even if they did manage to tack on three losers’ points that allow everyone to call them a .500 team.

But even if the Islanders do take the step past the badly wounded Blueshirts, it’s not as if they are going to become New York’s team. It doesn’t happen that way. Actually, it’s only in baseball where tectonic plates shift, where historical popularity can be reversed, where there seems to exist a huge base of undecideds subject to being seduced by the team that’s winning pennants.

In two years, the Islanders will be in Brooklyn. Even then, they won’t be able to challenge the Rangers. John Tavares might be the greatest show on ice we have in these parts, but the Islanders don’t and won’t have the marquee value that even the Nets have imported via Boston.

Now that will be an interesting one to gauge, whether the Nets can turn enough of the city their way to, if not tilt the court, at least level it. Big names from out of town to a trendy environment taking on tradition and heritage, if, just like the Knicks’ hockey brethren, the tradition smacks of a paucity of championships.

Seriously, how can it be? An Original Six plus an Original Altogether equaling three championships in the last 140 combined seasons — the Knicks (1970, 1973) and Rangers (1994) have played in every incarnation of the Garden imaginable, including the ones in which the hockey fans made some noise.

That’s history. That’s what the Islanders are chasing. It is?