Jonny B. Good and the Islanders ship be sinking.
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tRY IT NOWThat was, in short, how this Battle of New York with playoff implications for both sides went at UBS Arena on Tuesday night, as Jonny Brodzinski notched two goals and an assist in leading the Rangers to a 5-1 stomping of the Islanders that only adds to the pile of evidence that the latter ought to be selling off parts between now and March 7.
It was not quite as dominant for the Rangers as the scoreline implied, but a blowout win in which they embarrassed their archrivals on their own ice and saw the bottom six put forth a terrific physical effort has a way of quieting down any concerns about the shot count.
The standings, in which the Rangers are now tied with Ottawa and two points behind Columbus for the last playoff spot in the East, still paint an uninspiring picture for the Blueshirts.
But at least they are not the Islanders, who sit five back of their rivals and seven back of the Blue Jackets, their season standing on the precipice as Brock Nelson remains unsigned beyond July 1.
For the Islanders, a fourth loss in a row and a fifth in six dropped them back down to NHL-.500 and further erased all the good of a seven-game win streak last month.
As good a story as their late-January rally back into the race was, the reality of their situation is starting to become unavoidable, even for a group — and a front office — as stubborn in belief as this one.
Even a feel-good win for the Rangers, though, came with a major caveat.
The Blueshirts lost K’Andre Miller in the second period with a lower-body injury and Adam Fox suffered an upper-body injury on a fall in the third, with neither returning to the game.
This is not how either would have drawn up this season playing out, and it’s safe to say this was not how the Rangers envisioned getting two points on Tuesday.
It was the bottom pair and the fourth line that accounted for the entirety of a 3-1 Rangers lead after a first period in which the Islanders dominated the chances, with Urho Vaakanainen scoring one, Brodzinski scoring two and the defense pair of Scott Perunovich and Ryan Pulock being on the ice for all three, with Perunovich repeatedly screening his own goaltender.
In any case, though, allowing three goals on the first five shots was not the greatest start to Ilya Sorokin’s night.
Things did not improve for Sorokin or the Perunovich-Pulock pair as the game went on.
The Islanders netminder let J.T. Miller beat him clean from the slot to make it 4-1 11:21 into the second, followed by a third goal from the Rangers fourth line — this one with Rempe boxing out Pulock to tip in Brodzinski’s shot and make it 5-1.
That set off chants of “Rempe! Rempe!” inside of UBS to follow those serenading Igor Shesterkin following his stoning of Bo Horvat earlier in the period, and ensured that Sorokin — who allowed five goals on 11 shots — would sit the final period in what became his sixth straight loss to Shesterkin.
So, no, the Rangers were not all too hampered by Chris Kreider missing a second straight game, with Brennan Othmann drawing in and playing alongside Brodzinski and Rempe on the fourth line.
The Islanders, however, might have wanted a redo on healthy scratching Scott Mayfield — a casualty of his poor performance Sunday combined with Patrick Roy wanting more offense from his back end.
Adam Boqvist, who returned to the lineup, looked active and involved offensively.
Perunovich, however, could be in line to sit next game as the Islanders continue to sort through their options on what is suddenly an overcrowded blue line.
Whether or not that will ultimately matter for the Isles is another question entirely, because there was just one team that left UBS Tuesday looking like a playoff threat, and it was not them.