Barry Trotz said he was still “emotional” about half an hour after Tuesday’s game ended, the last one for the Isles until Feb. 1. The players were gassed yet smiling — warm vacations await most of them after seven games in 11 days, a couple of them being the sort that stay with you.



It was another weird Islanders-Rangers game, certainly in the final period. The Isles were under siege at times, but Thomas Greiss held the door closed and the visitors were opportunistic. The first 55 minutes were the sort that can seem confounding in the metrics, but also representative of the “Islander hockey” Trotz refers to often.



But there was a big twist in the third: Mathew Barzal, the only Islander headed to St. Louis for this weekend’s All-Star event, didn’t leave the bench after a brief shift early in the period. Trotz made reference last week to unnamed players whose “individual mindsets are ahead of the team a little bit...