Lav’s power-play gamble could pay big dividends

Peter Laviolette’s decision was a risky one, especially given that, entering Sunday, the Rangers had scored just one power-play goal across their previous eight games.

When Mathew Barzal was whistled for hooking, Laviolette directed Igor Shesterkin to the bench. He knew the odds that made a fouron-three setup a “tough power play” — and if the Rangers didn’t convert, he’d have wasted their top skaters. But with a two-man advantage, Chris Kreider and Mika Zibanejad both scored to force overtime and cap a 3-for-5 game for the power play in their eventual 6-5 overtime win against the Islanders.

“I thought our power-play guys at the end of the game, in the biggest of moments and the biggest of circumstances, they really delivered,” Laviolette said. “Those guys that went out on the ice, they had to work. They had to fight and scratch and deliver a game with under six minutes to go, and then under two minutes to go, and they really did.”

The Rangers experimented with a little bit of everything to ignite that unit. An 0-for-17 drought prompted Laviolette to add Blake Wheeler and Jonny Brodzinski to the first line and shift Panarin and Vincent Trocheck to the second group in one practice. He resorted to their original combinations by Wednesday, and Zibanejad helped them snap the scoreless stretch the following night.

But Trocheck reiterated Sunday — after the unit’s burst — that he didn’t think that the Rangers had been playing poorly. They were doing the right things. Getting the proper looks. The power-play goals just hadn’t followed.

Trocheck told The Post’s Mollie Walker that the Rangers improved with their recoveries and avoided “oneand-done” rushes Sunday, and that helped set up their power-play goal in the second period. Zibanejad collected a rebound. The puck cycled around to Panarin. There was a second shot. And Trocheck redirected it past Sorokin.

“We’re the same group that, like I said, was first in the league for 40-plus games,” defenseman Adam Fox said.

The man-advantage unit has always been a staple for the Rangers. At the beginning of the year, they were one of the league’s most productive units. Those conversions kept them as the No. 4 group (26.6 percent) despite the recent struggles.

Their lack of goals was still concerning, though, and that turned the Rangers’ first power-play goal against the Islanders into a spark. The second provided a hint that, maybe, the breakthrough wasn’t a fluke.

And by the time Zibanejad blasted the puck from the bottom of the circle inside the final 90 seconds of regulation, the Blueshirts might’ve uncovered enough concrete success to label it a turning point.

“We want to be timely, and you don’t always want to get the power-play goal when it’s the seventh goal of a 7-1 game,” Fox said. “But when you’re down and need a couple of power-play goals, I think that’s what we’re most proud of.”