The morning after beating the Rangers is always sweet; after completing a season sweep, even more so. And remember, it’s not about how they did it, it’s about how badly the misguided Rangers fans in your life feel.
The competition over the next four pre-Olympic games should put up more of a fight, but for now we can enjoy attaining four points that were there for the taking.
Islanders News
- Recaps of finishing the sweep with a sweep. [LHH | Newsday]
- Takeaways: Doing enough on D until their own chances went in. Also, official reason for Casey Cizikas missing the game was illness, not because he was banged up from the prior night. [Isles]
- Gross: The Isles can’t afford to try to do too much during this home stretch. [Newsday]
- “The regular-season series sweep is one thing, but the nature of each Rangers defeat signaled a turning point in the long-standing rivalry.” [Post]
- Soucy’s ability to play on the PK should free Matthew Schaefer from at least some of that load. [THN]
Here’s post-game availabilities from last night, with Schaefer praising the fans and enjoying the rivalry (some of that also in article form in the Post), Carson Soucy reacting to scoring against his old team (some of that in this Post article) and two blueline goals (“two snipes, identical goals really” :), and Patrick Roy talking about the effort and comparing Schaefer’s just-above-the-pad shot location to Ray Bourque’s.
Prior to all that Mathieu Darche continued post-trade media rounds, talking about rewarding the team for where it is, adding veterans who know how to play playoff hockey, and how a “humble” Roy is nothing like the “my way or the highway” public persona that followed him in the old days:
Elsewhere
Tons of games in the NHL Thursday night, including the Rangers losing. (Did we mention that?)
- How the Avalanche are so damned good (with some Brock Nelson quotes). [ESPN]
- With another loss, now to the Kraken, the Leafs are making their trade deadline destiny clearer by the day. [Sportsnet | TSN] The TSN version is a league roundup that also mentions a long list of teams interested in Artemi Panarin.
- Rangers legend Patrick Kane passed Mike Modano for all-time scorers among Americans (and the Wings emptied the bench to celebrate…a secondary assist…kind of anticlimactic.) [NHL]
- It was not your imagination: January set a new record for hat tricks in a month, as the league parties like it’s 1985 (albeit with 11 more teams). [Sportsnet]
- Jack Hughes left with an injury again, but this time it’s just a “tweak.” [Sportsnet | TSN]
This was an insane sequence: Macklin Celebrini took a stick-lift right by his face, so he flinched but did not “sell” a call and even tried to change the officials’ minds:
