It still is unsettled and will remain so until late Sunday night.
In the wake of the Islanders’ 4-3 overtime loss to the Sabres at Barclays on Saturday night, the identity of the Blueshirts’ first-round opponent will not be identified until the conclusion of the Isles’ game at home Sunday against the Flyers.
Anything other than an Islanders victory and the Rangers would open in Pittsburgh against the Penguins, whom the club refused to attempt to avoid by losing to the Red Wings on Saturday afternoon. An Islanders victory against Philadelphia would send the Rangers to Florida and a first-round matchup against the Panthers.
Rather than try to lose, the Rangers recorded a 3-2 season-finale victory over a Red Wings team that was attempting to clinch a playoff berth for the 25th straight season. The Red Wings made it anyway when the Bruins lost, but the team that had everything to lose lost and didn’t lose anything, and the team that had nothing to lose won.
“You don’t lose to play somebody else,” Marc Staal said. “If you do that, bad things happen. You play to win. We’re not scared of anybody.”
The Rangers, who finished with 101 points (46-27-9), have qualified for the playoffs six straight years. And following a four-year run during which the Rangers have gone to three conference finals and one Stanley Cup finals, it has seemed that this year’s group has been waiting all season to get to this finish line that also serves as a starting line.
“You never take [making the playoffs] for granted, being how hard that is,” Staal said. “It’s not an easy thing to do, with all the slumps and injuries you have to overcome. You have to find a way.
“But, when you’ve played as many playoff games and big games over the last couple of years, you tend to look forward to that again rather than staying in the moment all the time during the season. Now that we’re here, we’re excited.”
When Mats Zuccarello and Viktor Stalberg sat along with Ryan McDonagh and Dan Girardi, Oscar Lindberg not only played but got a top-six assignment. In perhaps the year’s greatest oddity, Lindberg recorded the team’s final goal of the season by scoring into an empty net at 17:24 of the third period after the Swedish rookie also got the first goal of the year, beating Corey Crawford at 1:43 of the first period on opening night in Chicago on Oct. 7, 2015.
Marek Hrivik played on the fourth line following his recall from Hartford, while Brad Skjei got his second game on Dan Boyle’s left, and Dylan McIlrath got his third straight skating with Staal.
“At the end of the day, we got the opportunity to play a couple of guys a couple of extra minutes and they did a good job out there,” said coach Alain Vigneault, who measured Skjei’s game as just “OK.”
It was 1-1 into the third after the Rangers successfully challenged an apparent Red Wings goal just 2:42 into the match and got a reversal on an offside call. The Blueshirts won it on third-period goals by Kevin Hayes and Lindberg that increased the lead to 3-1. They then secured the victory following a late Red Wings goal with a 4-on-6 penalty kill with netminder Jimmy Howard pulled over the final 1:13 that morphed into 3-on-6 for the final 20 seconds, when Staal joined Dan Boyle — who’d scored the first goal — in the box.
“I think our group feels pretty good about our game going into the playoffs,” said Derek Stepan. “You hear all the scenarios about playoff opponents, but it’s like Marc said the other day, if you start trying to lose, it is bad hockey karma. You play to win. Every time you step on the ice, you try to win a hockey game.”
Starting this week, they’ll need to win four out of seven in order to keep stepping on the ice. But against whom, the Rangers will not know until Sunday night.
