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J.T. Miller essentially benched as Rangers fall to Islanders

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Anti Raanta allows one of five goals on Sunday as the Rangers backup struggles against the Islanders.Seth Wenig/AP

Anti Raanta allows one of five goals on Sunday as the Rangers backup struggles against the Islanders.

So backup Antti Raanta couldn’t stop a puck in Sunday afternoon’s seven-goal first period, and most of the Rangers were asleep for the first 20 minutes of a 6-4 loss to the rival Islanders at the Garden.

But Blueshirts coach Alain Vigneault elected to single out arguably his team’s season MVP, left wing J.T. Miller, out of an entire roster of early underperformers for a couple of mistakes, benching Miller for most of the game’s final 30 minutes.

Miller played just one shift after he came off ice at the 15:25 mark of the second period – a 53-second twirl on the fourth line midway through the third period. Of course, Raanta (26 saves), who had been great in Friday’s win in Washington, could not hold late on Cal Clutterbuck’s goal off a face-off at 18:32 of the third before Frans Nielsen added a late empty-netter.

Miller, whose 17 goals rank third behind only linemates Derick Brassard (23 on the season) and Mats Zuccarello (21), lost coverage on both of Isles defenseman Johnny Boychuk’s goals in the first: a soft five-hole punch from the slot 2:50 in, and the big one – a seemingly harmless point shot off the wall at 13:14 to stretch a 3-2 to 4-2.

However, Brassard, who trudged through a third straight poor performance before burying the game-tying power play goal at 11:39 of the third, was equally as culpable on Boychuk’s first goal. Brassard has not been close to good enough lately and nor has Zuccarello, whose game has been here and there.

J.T. Miller (r.) sees the ice just once in the final 30 minutes as Alain Vigneault basically benches his best player.Jared Silber/NHLI via Getty Images

J.T. Miller (r.) sees the ice just once in the final 30 minutes as Alain Vigneault basically benches his best player.

And yet, due to Vigneault’s discretion, that duo skated on and struggled, shift after shift, mostly with Kevin Hayes on their wing, and even turns from Eric Staal (goal, assist) and fourth-liner Tanner Glass (goal).

Miller’s well-known weakness can be a sudden lack of attention to detail that manifests in a bad decision with the puck or arriving a step late to a play, like he did on Boychuk’s second goal. But he works his tail off and countless times this season has willed the Rangers back into games, due to his competitive nature and also to high level of skill.

And yet with the Rangers trailing by a goal, Vigneault essentially nailed him to the bench. The coach picked a strange time to take out his lesson-learning on the young Miller, 22, whose desire and production absolutely carried this team out of the doldrums in January and early February.

Vigneault’s best line by far was the trio of Oscar Lindberg, Staal and Viktor Stalberg, right to left. Nick Leddy’s bad interference penalty on the hungry Stalberg set up the third-period power play on which Brassard scored past a shaky Jaroslav Halak off assists from Keith Yandle and Derek Stepan.

Johnny Boychuk of the Islanders celebrates one of seven first period goals scored between the two teams.Jared Silber/NHLI via Getty Images

Johnny Boychuk of the Islanders celebrates one of seven first period goals scored between the two teams.

To take one of your team’s best players off the ice in this kind of game, though, is hard to understand or explain this late in the season in which he has been one of the primary players to get you to this point: especially with Henrik Lundqvist (neck spasms) sidelined for a second straight game and Raanta with no early composure, and emergency backup Magnus Hellberg unprepared to step in.

Sunday was a game that started with the Islanders roaring to a 3-0 lead because only three total Ranger skaters were visibly prepared to play a hockey game: Dan Boyle, Glass and Ranger-Isles newbie Staal – whose first point as a Ranger jumpstarted the team back into the game on an assist to Lindberg and who scored his first goal in a Blueshirt at 13:45 to answer Boychuk’s second goal and draw within 4-3 by the end of the first.

Staal even got stitches above his left eyebrow as a souvenir from his first Rangers-Islanders game after a Matt Martin wallop into the boards. But Raanta was horribly overwhelmed behind an equally-as-unprepared forward group, allowing three unanswered Isles goals in the game’s first five minutes as the Rangers were outshot 10-0 through the game’s first 10 minutes and 10 seconds.

The second-seeded Rangers (38-22-6, 82 points) fell to 0-2-1 this season head-to-head against the third-seeded Islanders (36-20-7, 79 points), who hold three games in hand and have owned their series despite being the lower seed in a first-round matchup if the NHL season ended today.

The Blueshirts also did not play with defenseman Marc Staal due to back spasms, and lost blue liner Dylan McIlrath to a right knee injury.

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