The Rangers came into Saturday hoping to finally win at home, and the Islanders came into Saturday hoping to relegate a messy loss to the Wild on Friday to the past.<\/p>\n
Score one for the visitors, who left Madison Square Garden with their first win in the building since March 17, 2022, by a mammoth 5-0 margin, having rode a 34-save shutout from Ilya Sorokin to a blowout.<\/p>\n
As for the Rangers, whatever bizarre piece of voodoo has caused what is now a seven-game home losing streak, during which scoring has become all but impossible, there is not much left for them to do or say aside from hope that the parade of chances they had early on Saturday means there will be some positive regression in the very near future.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re all human,\u201d Rangers coach Mike Sullivan said. \u201cOur group is a proud group, so yeah, it wears on you, we haven\u2019t won a game at home. If it doesn\u2019t wear on you, something\u2019s wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Garden crowd was left listless and booed the Rangers off the ice into the second intermission, with the Islanders having seized control of the game for good.<\/p>\n
Bo Horvat\u2019s second goal of the night, off Jonathan Drouin\u2019s no-look feed that went low-to-high on the power play, had made it a 3-0 game at 18:42 of the second.<\/p>\n
Horvat\u2019s 11th goal of the season also, at least temporarily, tied him for the NHL\u2019s scoring lead \u2014 and his two-goal performance was another mark in his favor for a Team Canada Olympic nod, as Kyle Dubas, who is pulling double duty with Hockey Canada and the Penguins, watched a second straight Islanders game from the press box.<\/p>\n
Igor Shesterkin makes a save during the Rangers\u2019 5-0 loss to the Islanders at the Garden on Nov. 8, 2025. Robert Sabo for the NY Post<\/p>\n
With Sorokin fending off everything he saw for the last 20 minutes, the Rangers\u2019 comeback chances were snuffed out, leaving the home side to answer for a fifth scoreless performance in seven games on Garden ice.<\/p>\n
Late goals from Jean-Gabriel Pageau and Anders Lee extended the score to embarrassing territory, and the Islanders were thrilled with the way they overcame a messy start to put together one of their most complete performances of the year.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we came out the exact opposite of what we were yesterday,\u201d Emil Heineman told The Post. \u201cWe were tough to play against. We were good offensively. We created a lot. We were good defensively.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bo Horvat celebrates a goal during the Islanders\u2019 win over the Rangers. Robert Sabo for the NY Post<\/p>\n
After Friday\u2019s lifeless performance at UBS Arena, Patrick Roy completely overhauled his lines and pairs for the first of a seven-game road trip that next visits Newark on Monday before a long haul out West, with nothing the same as it had been 24 hours prior.<\/p>\n
It took the Islanders a full period to gain comfort with that configuration, but even when they were struggling, the scoreboard went in their direction.<\/p>\n
The Islanders opened a 1-0 lead when Heineman fed Horvat 10:29 for the latter\u2019s 10th goal of the season, and Drouin doubled the lead with 34 seconds left in the first, taking advantage of a Rangers breakdown in the defensive zone to finish on his backhand.<\/p>\n
The Islanders celebrate a goal during their win against the Rangers. Robert Sabo for the NY Post<\/p>\n
The new-look lineup settled in as the game moved forward, and the difference was notable for Romanov \u2014 who has struggled greatly this season \u2014 in particular.<\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes you make decisions, you go with your gut and what you think will be the right thing for the team,\u201d Roy said. \u201cEverybody was focused. Everybody was on top of them. I thought that was a really, really good performance.\u201d<\/p>\n
Much as the final score had to do with Sorokin, it was one the Islanders could hang their hats on as a team too.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
They were perfect on the penalty kill, scored on the power play, played with a much higher battle level than 24 hours prior and were rewarded for it.<\/p>\n
Perfect, it was not. But 5-0 is hardly a time for complaints.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe didn\u2019t let ourselves sit back,\u201d Horvat said. \u201cWe kept pushing. They\u2019ve had our number in the past when we\u2019ve been up in a lot of games. Tonight felt different. We were aggressive. We stayed aggressive throughout the entire game.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Rangers came into Saturday hoping to finally win at home, and the Islanders came into Saturday hoping…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":366125,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,156530,149242,405,403,1301,1302,5226,5225,293,5228,5227,62,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-366124","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-bo-horvat","10":"tag-igor-shesterkin","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-city","13":"tag-new-york-islanders","14":"tag-new-york-rangers","15":"tag-newyork","16":"tag-newyorkcity","17":"tag-nhl","18":"tag-ny","19":"tag-nyc","20":"tag-sports","21":"tag-united-states","22":"tag-united-states-of-america","23":"tag-unitedstates","24":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","25":"tag-us","26":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115517982238337786","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=366124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366124\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/366125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=366124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=366124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=366124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}