Rick DiPietro said he wasn’t trying to stir it up last Saturday, wasn’t trying to awaken sleeping dogs when in a live television interview he said, “Hopefully we can kick the Rangers’ [butts] on Tuesday.”

Looking back after last night’s prophetic 3-2 Islanders win over the Rangers, DiPietro said if he could go back in time, he would have bitten his tongue and not uttered those fighting words. However, the Isles played with a certain snarl for periods of last night’s win at the Garden – their first against the Blueshirts after absorbing five straight losses to their most hated rivals – that appeared to echo DiPietro’s rallying cry.

“It was strictly to get a crowd reaction,” DiPietro said of the statement he uttered on Coliseum ice. “I think it came out wrong.”

Maybe – but it sure gave some energy and a hint of Islanders bravado to a rivalry that had been ridiculously one-sided, the Rangers last night suffering only their second regulation loss to the Isles since 2003. Talk is cheap, they say, but not when it’s backed up with the game the Isles played in front of a hostile crowd. Not when it’s backed up with the 36 saves DiPietro made.

“New York is a really good hockey team and they don’t need any incentive to come out in this building and try to beat their natural rivals,” Brad Shaw said. “I would prefer he not say it in the future, especially if this was a game that meant a lot to us. It might have added a little too much pressure on us.

“But in the situation we’re in, it might have been just what we needed.”

DiPietro’s name is filling up quite a bit of the Garden as he builds a reputation as a major figure in the rivalry, going back to when he challenged Mark Messier to a fight in the pre-lockout NHL.

“I think he enjoys playing here,” Shaw said of DiPietro. “I think it’s such an energetic building because of the rivalry that exists.”

evan.grossman@nypost.com