Joe Camporeale-USA TODAY Sports
For years now it seems like the New York Islanders always have the days marked when they play the New York Rangers and are always up to play them. Too bad the Rangers don’t ever feel the same way.
While the Islanders always treat a Rangers-Islanders game like a playoff game, the Rangers seem to treat it like an exhibition game. This can be seen by looking at each team’s effort during the course of the game, and once again last night’s contest was no different. The Islanders out skated, out hustled and beat the Rangers to every loose puck.
Even after the Rangers jumped out to a 2-0 lead, I could see the way the Islanders’ offense was pressuring the Rangers’ defense that the Rangers would crack and the lead would be short-lived. Unfortunately, I was right as the Islanders would go on to win by a 5-3 final score.
Now the Islanders are a good team, better than their record says, yet the Rangers keep on treating them like they are bottom feeders and the easiest team to beat. How can you come out so flat again against the Islanders when for years now you have seen the Islanders always give 110 percent in their games against the Rangers? Why the Rangers decided to not bring their A game Tuesday night is beyond me, but it is disturbing to say the least.
The game showed me what I have been saying all along which is that the Rangers need to find consistency in order to be taken seriously, and losing to the Islanders at home, two times in a row, and getting zero points out of both of those games shows me that they are still the same old inconsistent Rangers from weeks ago. They still have a lot of work to do to be taken seriously around the league.
You can’t win every game, but you can certainly play with heart all the time. The Rangers only seem to do that off and on with the majority of the time being off when playing the Islanders.
Steven Carollo is a New York Rangers and sports writer for RantSports.com. Follow him on Twitter, add him on Facebook, connect with him on LinkedIn and join his Google network.
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