Rangers vs Islanders: Let the rivalry continue

When the  New York Rangers play the Islanders, a longtime rivalry is revived.  This year, the two teams play each other three times in a little over a week.

The folks in charge of schedules at the NHL certainly weren’t paying attention when they didn’t schedule a match between the New York Rangers and the Islanders until mid-January.  Then they compounded their mistake by scheduling the teams to play three times in nine days.

This scheduling quirk has the potential to make for some really great and emotional hockey, but it could also have dire consequences for the Blueshirts.

On the emotional level, even though none of these players save Long Island native Adam Fox has lived through the contentious rivalry between the teams, it seems like they always get caught up in it.  The fervor of the fans is contagious and the Islander players do seem to have a chip on their shoulders due to their second class citizen status in the area.  Face it, the Islanders are the Rodney Dangerfield of ice hockey.

Three games leads to carry overs of bad blood and retribution from game to game.  Imagine if the Rangers and Blues were playing again tomorrow after the game ending scrum on Saturday.  It would be the proverbial “old time hockey.”

The dire consequences would be if the Islanders, who have been playing a superior brand of hockey,   take it to the Rangers.  A sweep would be catastrophic for the Blueshirts dreams of a playoff spot. Even two out of three would be a big problem.

At any rate, the three games promise to be a lot of fun, made even more interesting by the fact that two are at the Garden and the one way game is at the venerable Nassau Coliseum. One thing is to be sure, if the Rangers want to entertain any kind of notion of taking two of three or sweeping, they will have to play better than they did in St. Louis.