NO SKIDDING: The Islanders’ Kyle Okposo (21) battles against Rick Nash of the Rangers on March 7 at the Coliseum, where the two teams will meet tomorrow night with an NHL playoff berth on the line. (NHLI via Getty Images)
Twice.
Twice, and only twice throughout the 40-season Battle of New York have the Rangers and Islanders met this late in the season with a playoff berth on the line for both teams.
Tomorrow night will make three when the Blueshirts invade the Coliseum two weeks before the regular season concludes.
Both teams will be in playoff spots when the puck is dropped, though neither will be in a secure position. The Senators, Islanders, Rangers, Jets and Devils (barely) are the five teams in the mix for the East’s final three playoff berths.
Last night could not have been worse for the Rangers, who lost ground to all three of the competition who played and won their respective matches.
The sixth-place Senators, who defeated the Flyers in Philadelphia, have 46 points with eight games to go. The seventh-place Islanders, who defeated the Bruins in Boston to go 8-1-1 in their last 10 matches, have 46 points with seven remaining.
The eighth-place Rangers have 44 points with eight to play while the Jets, who hammered the Panthers 7-2 last night, have 44 points with only six games remaining. The Devils have 40 points with eight games to go.
Thus, tomorrow night’s stakes will not only be extremely high, the only two Rangers-Islanders regular-season matches with significance equal were played on March 25, 2007, at the Coliseum and on April 2, 1993, at the Garden.
In 2006-07, the seventh-place Rangers held a two-point lead over the 10th-place Islanders, who had eight games to go and one in hand on the Blueshirts.
Henrik Lundqvist, Dan Girardi and Ryan Callahan are the only players on either club to have participated in that one, a 2-1 Rangers’ victory on Brendan Shanahan’s goal against Rick DiPietro at 4:11 of overtime.
Both teams made the playoffs that season. The Rangers, who gained the six seed, swept Atlanta in the first round before losing in six to Buffalo. The Islanders, who finished eighth in what was their most recent trip to the tournament, were beaten in a five-game first round by the Sabres.
In 1992-93, the Islanders held the Patrick Division’s final berth by one point with each team having nine games remaining.
Pierre Turgeon scored at 3:41 of overtime to lift the Islanders to a 3-2 victory (there was no such thing as a loser’s point back then) that established a fork in the road for both clubs.
The Islanders stunned the two-time defending Stanley Cup champion Penguins in the first round on David Volek’s Game 7 OT goal before taking out the Capitals in six in the second round, the series ending with Dale Hunter’s infamous and cowardly run from behind that took out Turgeon. The Islanders lost to the Canadiens in the conference final.
The Rangers, meanwhile, won their next match but lost the final seven for a 1-11 record in the last dozen games.
Ron Smith, who had replaced Roger Neilson behind the bench earlier in the season, was immediately dismissed, with the Rangers hiring a fellow named Mike Keenan to take charge for 1993-94.
The Rangers have finished ahead of the Islanders seven straight seasons by an average margin of 19.1 points.
The rivalry has rarely featured teams operating on a level ice surface. Indeed, the clubs have been separated in the standings by five points or fewer only five times in 39 seasons, with a gap of at least 20 points on 20 different occasions.
This season, though, represents an exception.
This season, a late-season showdown with the playoffs at stake.
This will make three.