Henrik Lundqvist battled off a barrage of shots in a matter of seconds, ending up sprawled on the ice with three Rangers setting up a barricade in the crease behind him late in the second period.
But after all that work to keep the game a one-goal deficit, the dam didn’t hold much longer.
The puck briefly cleared the blue line, but Mathew Barzal brought the Islanders right back into the zone to start up a tic-tac-toe goal for Jordan Eberle.
“That felt like the game right there,” Lundqvist said.
The Rangers had their chances to find a way back in, but were stopped every time as they spent the rest of the night still trying to figure out their crosstown foes in a 3-0 loss Thursday at Barclays Center.
The Islanders (28-25-6) won their sixth straight meeting in the rivalry as Jaroslav Halak made 50 saves for the club’s first shutout of the season.
Rangers coach Alain Vigneault said he believed his team was due to take one in this series, but it sank even lower, losing for the 10th time in the teams’ last 11 matchups. The Blueshirts (27-26-5) also dropped to 0-5 at Barclays Center.
“All the losses we have this year hurt, but this one really stings,” winger Mats Zuccarello said. “It’s the opponent, for sure. It’s a rivalry and it hurts. We played a good game, [but] at the end of the day, it’s not good enough.”
While the Rangers had a brief turnaround following the front office’s public declaration to rebuild, it may have been a mirage. They won back-to-back games immediately after general manager Jeff Gorton’s announcement last week and pledged to make a playoff push regardless. But they have now lost back-to-back games and nine of their last 12.
“The last few weeks, slowly, we were just moving in the wrong direction here,” Lundqvist said. “We’re just not getting enough points.”
The closest the Rangers came to finding a way past Halak came at 6:55 of the third period. In the middle of a scrum, David Desharnais slipped one through but replays showed he used a distinct kicking motion. The referees, who initially ruled it a goal, changed their call after a video review, keeping it a 3-0 deficit.
The Blueshirts had other opportunities to cut into the Islanders’ lead, with a few pucks trickling through the open crease, but they were missing a stick to finish any of them off.
“I don’t think we played demoralized,” Vigneault said. “To the contrary, there were a lot of things that I liked about this game. I didn’t like the results obviously. You’d think with the number of time we spent in their end and the number of pucks we threw at their net that one of them would find a way to sneak through. It didn’t tonight.”
The Isles picked up where they left off in the teams’ previous meeting Jan. 13. In a 7-2 loss at the Garden, the Rangers had trouble stopping the Anthony Beauvillier-Barzal-Eberle line, which piled up 12 points.
Eberle drew a tripping penalty on Brady Skjei early in the first period Thursday that led to a power-play goal from Josh Bailey, who was given room to work by Nick Holden and Rick Nash and beat Lundqvist top shelf.
The kind of goal the Rangers were missing was the one that put the Islanders up 3-0, 3:57 into the third period. Beyond the end line, Thomas Hickey backhanded a pass out front that hit off the skate of Desharnais and through the legs of Lundqvist, making any hopes for a comeback that much harder.
“That,” Lundqvist said, “is the way it’s going.”