Access the Rangers beat like never before

Join Post Sports+ for exciting subscriber-only features, including real-time texting with Mollie Walker about the inside buzz on the Rangers.

The Rangers left Tuesday’s win with a pair of injury scares, and one of them turned into a nightmare.

Adam Fox, who exited after falling to the ice and holding his shoulder early in the third period of their 5-1 win over the Islanders at UBS Arena, is going on injured reserve with an upper-body injury.

He’s going to miss time — and needs to miss at least seven days, according to the protocols attached to the IR designation — but is expected back before the end of the regular season, with 24 games remaining and the Rangers two points back of the final wild-card spot in the Eastern Conference.

So while it’s not a worst-case scenario for the Rangers and Fox ahead of the looming trade deadline March 7, it will cause some additional shuffling for a blue line unit that has already shipped out Jacob Trouba and brought in Will Borgen and Urho Vaakanainen via trades this season.

K’Andre Miller landed on injured reserve in December with an upper-body injury before returning later that month, too — and he also exited Tuesday’s game. Ryan Lindgren, Fox’s partner on the Blueshirts’ top pairing, missed the start of the season.

Fox, the 2021 Norris Trophy winner, possesses an indispensable role with the Blueshirts, though, as he has collected 48 points across 58 games while also serving as a key piece of their top power-play unit.

In the final minute of the first period Tuesday, he picked up the secondary assist on Jonny Brodzinski’s goal — stretching his point streak to eight games and giving him 12 points across the Rangers’ past 12 games — and his assists total sits third among defensemen this season.

But one injury upended that stability.

As the Islanders moved the puck in the Rangers zone just over three minutes into the third period and a cluster of players gathered in front of the net, Fox became tangled up with Kyle MacLean, and the pair tumbled to the ice.

A whistle immediately followed, as Fox was called for a hooking penalty, but instead of skating over to the penalty box, the 27-year-old rolled over on the ice, got up and veered toward the bench — hunched over and favoring his left side.

He didn’t return, forcing the Rangers to play with four defensemen for the rest of the game with Miller already out.

At one point, when Braden Schneider briefly went down the tunnel, that number dipped to three.

“I thought the guys did an excellent job of just hanging in there and keeping it simple,” head coach Peter Laviolette said Tuesday. “I thought they were all solid. It’s tough when you lose a couple of key players like that, but I thought the guys really stepped up in their place.”

Miller’s status remains unclear for Friday’s game against the Maple Leafs at the Garden.

The Rangers recalled defenseman Matthew Robertson from AHL Hartford on Wednesday, and his first appearance in a game will mark the 23-year-old’s NHL debut.

With Fox out, that could also create a window for Zac Jones — who said at the start of January that he felt like he was “rotting away” with the Rangers — to not only slide back into the lineup but also log critical minutes.

He played two games with AHL Hartford last week while on a conditioning stint, scoring a goal and collecting five shots, and he could also earn ice time on power plays.

During his brief cameos in 2024-25, Jones has logged over 26 minutes of power-play time, and it has been one of his strengths dating back to when the Rangers selected him in the third round of the 2019 NHL Draft.

This all creates another wrinkle for general manager Chris Drury to consider ahead of the trade deadline, too. He has until March 7 to add another defenseman.

He has until then to trade someone such as Lindgren, an unrestricted free agent after the season.

And Fox’s injury — and the degrees of recovery that follow over the next week-plus — adds another layer to every move the Rangers make until he returns.

In the present, though, before anything with the deadline and a return date comes into focus, they now need to operate without one of their top defensemen.