CLASH COURSE

Strome one of few who's seen Isles-Rangers from both sides

Ryan Strome started thinking about returning to the Coliseum, and when he looked around his Rangers locker room for someone to reminiscence with, he could hardly find anyone who would even know what he was talking about.

That’s because when Strome and his Blueshirts head out to Long Island for the second game of this odd midseason three-game set of the rivalry Thursday night, he will be traveling with a club that is so young and so different than the past few years. Forget the most recent time the Rangers actually made the trek through the midtown tunnel, out on the LIE and down the Meadowbrook Parkway. That would be way back on March 10, 2015, a game when Strome was with the Islanders and actually assisted on an Anders Lee goal before the Rangers came back to win, 2-1, on Rick Nash’s thirdperiod tally.

“It’s kind of crazy, right? A lot has gone down for both teams,” Strome said before his team took the opening salvo of the season series with a 6-2 win at the Garden on Monday night behind a whirlwind five-point performance from Artemi Panarin.

It was a high-paced affair dominated by Panarin, and the animosity rose throughout, culminating with a handful of scuffles near the end of the game. (Safe to say Tony DeAngelo will be playing angry on Thursday.) But it took that long for these teams to get reacquainted, as the only current Rangers to have ever played a game in the Coliseum are Henrik Lundqvist, Marc Staal, Chris Kreider and Jesper Fast.

“I said to Staalsy and Kreids, ‘We’re playing in the Coli, how unreal is that?’ Then I looked around and I’m like, ‘I don’t think any of these guys have even played at the Coliseum,’ ” said Strome, who was taken by the Islanders with the No. 5-overall pick in 2011, played parts of four seasons with them before a 100-game sojourn in Edmonton and then a trade at the beginning of last season that brought him to Broadway.

“The teams have changed so much,” he said. “The rivalry is always going to be there, but I think for the guys that have been there a little longer, it’s a little more heated.”

For as much as the Rangers have changed since their rebuild began in earnest with the sending of their letter to the fans on Feb. 8, 2018, the Islanders’ transformation has been even more dramatic. They have stability in ownership, who have broken ground on a new arena at Belmont Park, set to open for the 2021-22 season. They have stability in the front office with team president Lou Lamoriello running things with an iron fist.

And they have stability behind the bench in the Stanley Cup-winning Barry Trotz.

This is a far cry from the buddies club that ran up and down the ice, hoping to outscore its opponents for years. They are a legit contender this spring if they can add some more offensive firepower, but they were infuriated with the sloppy way they played on Monday, turning the game into a track meet that favored the highly skilled Blueshirts.

The odds of that happening again on Thursday are very small. The Islanders gained quick redemption on Tuesday night against the lowly Red Wings at the Coliseum, while the Rangers had a day off before they’re set to return to practice Wednesday. The third game of the set is next Tuesday at the Garden, and by then, the rivalry should be reengaged, no matter how different the teams are from years past.

“It’s two teams out there fighting for valuable points, and two competitive teams,” Rangers coach David Quinn said, as his club is desperately holding on to its postseason hopes. “We’ve got a lot of respect for those guys.”

It might be a little more unruly Thursday in the stands at the cramped — or revamped? — Coliseum, where the rivalry lives with far more carryover than the rosters on the ice.

“I think especially going back to the Coli this week, it’s going to be pretty awesome,” Strome said. “It’s going to be nuts in there.”