If the Eastern Conference-leading Islanders provide a measuring stick for the also-running Rangers, then the Blueshirts came up about as small Tuesday night at the Coliseum as the meteorologists around these parts whose predictions of an historic blizzard panicked the populace.

Came up about as small … again.

For it’s now 0-for-3 for the city slickers against their suburban cousins following this 4-1 defeat in which the Rangers didn’t score until 10 seconds remained in the match. It’s 0-for-3 while outscored by an aggregate 13-4 … 11-2 over the last seven periods … 7-1 over the last two games just two weeks apart.

Suburban cousins?

Make that suburban daddies.

Three games constitute a small sample size, but it doesn’t take a seer to see the Islanders loom as a legitimate roadblock to the Rangers’ objective of returning to the Stanley Cup final. It doesn’t take a seer to see which team is New York’s best at the moment, either.

For here’s Henrik Lundqvist, when asked by The Post whether the 32-14-1 Islanders are the best team the 27-14-4 Blueshirts have faced this season:

“I think so, yes,” said The King, by leaps and bounds his team’s best player. “The way they move the puck from their defense to the forwards … at times it’s a little risky the way they go for it, but when they’re on, they are really good.”

It seems as though the Islanders have been on against the Rangers in all three meetings during which the Blueshirts’ best players have been anything but.

The Rick Nash-Derick Brassard-Mats Zuccarello unit was dreadful through the first period during which the Islanders created a bevy of glorious chances against both that line and their team. Ryan McDonagh, nowhere near the standard he established for himself the last two years, seemed dazed and confused. The Chris Kreider-Derek Stepan-Marty St. Louis unit was merely ordinary, and that only when compared to Brassard’s line.

“We got some chances but we gave up way too much,” said Zuccarello, scoreless in his last eight games and with one goal in his last 18. “Playing against them is hard because it almost seems like they have no structure the way they attack, so we run around and give them too many chances.

“They have so many skilled players, and for some reason we get into the game they want to play, going back-and-forth, trading chances,” he said. “We get out of our game. We don’t play smart against them.

“We need to grind it out against them.”

The Rangers play neither smart nor well against the Islanders. They’ve been unable to match the Islanders’ finesse or physical games. The Blueshirts did finish with 41 shots on net, the last one from Carl Hagelin beating Jaro Halak on a power play at 19:50 to end the netminder’s shutout streak against the Blueshirts at 122:00, but the shots didn’t tell the story of this one that the Islanders — impressive in every way — grabbed onto early and never let go.

Again. It’s no secret the Islanders are deeper one-through-12 up front than the Rangers. But this wasn’t necessarily about depth. It was more about the top guys getting outplayed and pretty much all the guys getting outworked from the jump.

It was about the Islanders dictating and eliminating the Blueshirts’ Point A-to-Point B game. Again. And the Rangers’ inability to do the same. Again.

“The last one at the Garden [on Jan. 13], we were coming right off that West Coast trip and weren’t very good, but we were both in the same boat for this one, and they came out harder and wanted it more,” Marc Staal told The Post. “The first 10 minutes they were much better and much quicker to the puck.

“Our gap was loose, the back-pressure wasn’t always there. I thought the rest of the game we did a better job, protected the puck well and had it in their end a lot, but overall we just didn’t get it done.”

It’s 0-3 against the Islanders, 0-3 against the Lightning, which equals 0-6 against the East’s two division leaders. It’s 0-6 with a goal differential of 11 for and 28 against.

How’s that minus-17 for putting a chill in the parade plans?

Still, perhaps whistling into the wind, the Rangers didn’t seem shaken by the result. Disappointed, yes; shaken, no.

“I’m very confident in this group,” Staal said. “Obviously we have to find the way to beat the teams ahead of us.

“We need to elevate and do a better job against the top teams going down the stretch.”

Starting with the top guys, the Rangers need to do a much better job against the top team in New York. A much better job, that is, against their daddies.