One more time: Why N.Y. needs Rangers vs. Islanders in NHL playoffs

UNIONDALE, N.Y. — If the hockey gods are up there watching, above the retired jerseys and the rusted rafters and the ceiling tiles that look like your mom’s basement, this will not be the end.

If there is some puck justice in this world, the Rangers will visit Nassau Coliseum again, three or four more times this year, and close this chapter of the rivalry out right.

There were a few twinkles in the eyes of the workers here on Tuesday for the last regular season game between New York and New York in this worn-out old building. They got one last treat – a barn-burner of a game in which the home team scored first and the visitors came back to win 2-1 despite a breathless final minute spent almost entirely in the Rangers zone. The prior meeting here was a 6-5 shootout, but this was more like playoff hockey, and it should be a stage-setter rather than a finale.

These two teams should meet in the playoffs.

It hasn’t happened since 1994 — long enough to predate many of the players’ memory spans — but it should happen this year. Both teams are good enough to win the Stanley Cup, and a playoff series to close out this building would be one more classic memory in a place that only has memories left.

New York has everything, but it doesn’t have anything else like this rivalry. The Yankees and Mets play rarely, the Giants and Jets only have the Snoopy Bowl, and the Knicks can’t really count the Brooklyn Nets as blood rivals just yet.

All those teams play in fancy new (or renovated in the case of Madison Square Garden) stadiums anyway, and the Islanders will as well when they move to the Barclays Center in Brooklyn next season. But now there is this place, where the concourses are more like hallways and the seats are more like folding chairs.

“I don’t think any building will be as loud as this one,” said Isles forward Matt Martin after the game. “The fans are on top of you. The atmosphere is insane.”

It is insane.

Fans from both teams are so loud that if you close your eyes, you can’t tell who’s at home. Fans from both teams are so loyal, that if you squint your eyes, you can’t tell who’s wearing Rangers blue sweaters and who’s wearing Islanders blue sweaters. The “Let’s Go Rangers” and “Let’s Go Islanders” chants ricocheted off the cement walls all night on Tuesday like pingpong balls in a lottery drawing. Insane is an understatement for what a playoff series would be like here.

“You can hear it in warm-ups, you can hear it during the game,” Rangers forward Marc Staal said of the noise. “It definitely helps.”

And although most players will dutifully say they will play whoever is in front of them next month, they would love the spectacle of a New York-vs.-New York playoff.

“Of course we do,” said Martin. “That’d be special for New York in general.”

It’s already special. Both teams are near the top of the league standings. Both have strong goaltending and star power – the Rangers with Rick Nash and the Isles with John Tavares. The one thing missing is the one thing a playoff series can provide: the kind of smoldering mutual resentment that defines the best of rivalries.

The history is surely there. Old-timers know the Islanders franchise had to pay the Rangers a $4 million fee when they first encroached on the Blueshirts’ regional turf in the 1970s, and in a way, the Brooklyn move is payback. The Islanders were the long shots who won only 12 games in their first season. Then in 1977 the Rangers passed on Mike Bossy twice in the draft and the Islanders got one of the ingredients they would need to turn the rivalry on its head. Four Stanley Cups later, the Rangers were the outcasts.

And naturally it was a former Islanders draft pick, Neil Smith, who led the Rangers to the Cup as the team’s general manager in 1994. But for the better part of the next two decades, both franchises were also-rans and the rivalry was dormant. The “highlight” in this century may have been the bizarre fan brawl here between opposing fans in Santa suits in 2003. The hatred is that kind of good, but the hockey has been that kind of bad.

Now we have the Rangers (defending Eastern Conference champions) and the Islanders (one of the great stories in sports. The teams could meet as early as the first round of the playoffs, and both are good enough to get to the Eastern Conference Final. There is a sense that even though the Rangers have visited this building for the last time in the regular season, something else is brewing. The last Islanders player to score a goal in the Uniondale part of this series was Anders Lee, wearing No. 27, which is a number Isles fans want raised to the rafters for John Tonelli.

Are the hockey gods conspiring?

“At some point,” said Martin, “we’ll have to go through them.”

And, we can only hope, the Rangers will have to come back through here.