Rangers’ blowout win all-but eliminates Islanders

Rookie Brett Berard had his first career two-goal game for the visiting New York Rangers, who remained mathematically alive in the Eastern Conference wild-card race while all but ending the New York Islanders’ playoff hopes with a 9-2 win on Thursday in Elmont, N.Y.
Artemi Panarin added two goals and an assist for the Rangers (37-35-7, 81 points) who snapped a three-game losing streak and moved them within six points of the idle Montreal Canadiens for the final wild-card spot.
The Rangers kept their “tragic number” for elimination at one while also reducing the tragic number for the Islanders (34-33-11, 79 points) to one. The teams could be eliminated as soon as Friday night, when they are idle while the Canadiens visit the Ottawa Senators, who have already clinched a playoff berth.
Mika Zibanejad, Will Cuylle, Vincent Trocheck and Panarin scored in the first period as the Rangers removed any suspense from the final meeting of the season between the rivals.
Juuso Parssinen tallied in the second and Berard added two third-period goals before Alexis Lafreniere and Panarin closed out the scoring for the Rangers, who outscored the Islanders 23-5 while sweeping the four-game season series.
Adam Fox collected three assists, and J.T. Miller, Sam Carrick and Parssinen each had two helpers. Lafreniere and Trocheck added one assist apiece.
The nine goals Thursday were tied for the most ever scored by the Rangers against the Islanders and their most since a 9-2 win on Feb. 14, 1992.
Igor Shesterkin made 44 saves for the Rangers, who are on the verge of becoming the first team since the 2014-15 Boston Bruins to miss the playoffs the season after winning the Presidents’ Trophy.
The loss was the eighth in 10 games (2-5-3) for the Islanders, who are likely to miss the playoffs for the second time in the last seven seasons. Maxim Tsyplakov scored a power-play goal with 52.5 seconds left in the middle period before Hudson Fasching scored his first goal of the season with 9:08 remaining in the third.
Islanders goalie Marcus Hogberg, playing in place of the injured Ilya Sorokin (lower body), recorded 22 saves. Tristan Lennox, the fifth goalie to appear in net this season for the Islanders, replaced Hogberg after Berard’s first goal and made one save before being pulled following Berard’s second score.
Lennox, 22, was making his NHL debut.