A year ago, two years ago, three years ago, the Islanders give this game away 10 times out of 10.\u00a0<\/p>\n
How many times did you see them start well, fail to build on a lead and get punished for it? Too many to count.\u00a0<\/p>\n
These Islanders, though, did not give away this Battle of New York after taking a lead under a minute into the contest and sitting on it for 58:45 until Simon Holmstrom\u2019s empty-netter sealed two points.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Anders Lee celebrates after the Islanders-Rangers game on Dec. 27, 2025. NHLI via Getty Images<\/p>\n
These Islanders bore down, played stingy defense against the surging Rangers, got 27 saves from David Rittich and walked out of UBS Arena with a 2-0 victory over their local rivals, keeping the Blueshirts at arm\u2019s length in the standings.\u00a0<\/p>\n
If you want to understand what is different about this team, this year, you could do a lot worse than watching what played out at UBS Arena on Saturday evening.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe not,\u201d coach Patrick Roy said when asked whether his team could have done this as recently as earlier this season. \u201cBut I will say this: our players deserve a lot of credit for the hard work they put into it. I really feel like the way we defend and the commitment that we make to defend, it\u2019s impressive by our players.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Islanders were superb in the neutral zone. They defended with structure. They got a terrific effort from their backup netminder Rittich, who denied Artemi Panarin in alone on a breakaway in the second, stopped Carson Soucy on a penalty shot in the third and secured his second shutout of the season.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t really care much about shutouts,\u201d Rittich said. \u201cI\u2019m not a big shutout guy, because I don\u2019t have many of them.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Islanders came into the third period hanging onto a 1-0 lead they\u2019d taken after just 58 seconds, when Anders Lee got to Mathew Barzal\u2019s rebound to put it past Igor Shesterkin.\u00a0<\/p>\n
David Rittich makes a save during the Islanders-Rangers game on Dec. 27, 2025. Robert Sabo for NY Post<\/p>\n
Despite five power plays, all the Islanders had to show for it was Bo Horvat putting one off the crossbar, and that was after Cal Ritchie\u2019s slash had given Soucy a penalty shot on which the defenseman failed to take advantage.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI saw him, he went to [Jonathan Quick],\u201d Rittich said. \u201cSo that tells you a little bit about his confidence and gave me a little bit more confidence. It\u2019s just a game of little moves and confidence. I was on the right side.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
If the Rangers felt hard done by with some of the officiating earlier in the game, the Islanders shared the feeling by the end. They took two consecutive penalties in the final five minutes, skating four-on-six for the final minute of the latter.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ighor Shesterkin looks on during the Rangers-Islanders game on Dec. 27, 2025. Robert Sabo for NY Post<\/p>\n
That served only to amplify the feeling of missed opportunity for the Rangers, who watched Holmstrom\u2019s empty-netter seal an Islanders win with 17 seconds to go.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIs there ever enough offense?\u201d Rangers coach Mike Sullivan asked rhetorically. \u201cProbably not, but we didn\u2019t finish, obviously, on the ones we had tonight.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Islanders thoroughly dominated the first period, holding the Rangers without a shot or any meaningful puck possession for the game\u2019s first 11:25. After that, though, there was little in the Rangers\u2019 game to take issue with.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOn the ice from Long Island\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSign up for Inside the Islanders by Ethan Sears, a weekly Sports+ exclusive.\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\tThank you\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
They killed five Islander power plays and were within an inch of scoring on their own man advantage when Will Cuylle\u2019s effort hit the post and bounced out, fooling the referees and most of a sellout crowd before being overturned at 14:35 of the second. They controlled the play for long stretches, though perhaps there could have been more traffic around Rittich\u2019s crease to show for it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
No matter. The Islanders settled into a defensive posture, the sort that would have been fatal pretty recently, and saw the game out.\u00a0<\/p>\n
All four lines forechecked, Rittich\u2019s sightlines were kept unimpeded and the goaltender was there after a handful of turnovers.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The third line in particular had a standout night, and just a couple games after being made a healthy scratch in Buffalo, Max Shabanov had one of his more complete games as an NHLer. Barzal\u2019s line \u2014 as always, at its best when No. 13 is engaged without the puck \u2014 was strong as well.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On a night where he didn\u2019t have his usual offensive spark and committed a few uncharacteristic turnovers, Matthew Schaefer played a clean game defensively over a team-high 27:03 of ice. Tony DeAngelo, resurgent after a rough start to the season, had one of his better games too.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we know our identity as a group and how we\u2019re gonna have success,\u201d Lee said. \u201cWe showed that tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A year ago, two years ago, three years ago, the Islanders give this game away 10 times out…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":373698,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[394,4823,385,99],"class_list":["post-373697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-new-york-islanders","tag-new-york-rangers","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=373697"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373697\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/373698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=373697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=373697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=373697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}