“What the f-ck?” That was my first reaction during the Rangers-Islanders game on Monday night. It only took 11 seconds for Nassau Coliseum to be given a reason to explode at the expense of the Rangers thanks to a Cam Tablot errant pass/brain fart that gave Jonathan Tavares an open net to put the Islanders ahead as early as possible.

I sat through the Rangers’ third-period collapse against the Islanders on Oct. 14. I watched the Rangers shut out at home by the Islanders on Jan. 13 after the Rangers had just swept California. And I somehow kept watching on Jan. 27 when the Rangers lost to the Islanders again and couldn’t solve Jaroslav Halak until 19:50 of the third period. Here I was again, getting overly excited about a regular-season game thanks to the New York hockey hype, only to be deflated before Sam Rosen and Joe Micheletti could even get settled in.

I spent the last three weeks since the most recent Rangers-Islanders game wondering how the Islanders had become such a bad matchup for the Rangers. Why couldn’t the Rangers beat a team they had beaten up for so long and why couldn’t they solve Jaroslav Halak? Jaroslav Halk! JAR-O-SLAV HA-LAK! What was happening to the Rangers when they played the Islanders? Why were they 0-3-0 with a minus-9 goal differential against the Islanders and 33-13-5 with a plus-46 goal differential against the rest of the league?

Eleven minutes and 35 seconds later, Frans Nielsen scored, the Coliseum sounded like it was late April, May or June and I sunk even further into an angry depression. The happiness provided by Ryan McDonagh’s goal at 14:35 of the first did hold me over through the first intermission, but then Johnny Boychuk dropped the hammer at the start of the second with an absolute bomb from the blue (literally on the blue). The Islanders led 3-1 and I tried to look into the future at what a possible Rangers-Islander playoff series would be like.

I have said all along that I don’t want a Rangers-Islanders playoff series because from a Rangers fan standpoint, nothing good can come from it. If the Rangers win, they’re the Rangers and they’re supposed to win. And if the Islanders win, it’s basically the worst thing imaginable. It’s the same feeling I have about Yankees-Red Sox playoff series. If the Yankees win, they’re the Yankees and they’re supposed to win. And if they lose, well, I lived through 2004 while actually living in Boston, and I have done everything to erase that week and the weeks that followed from my mind. The aftermath of a series loss far outweighs the satisfaction of a series win, unless that series win eventually leads to a championship. There’s nothing for the Rangers and Rangers fans to gain by playing the Islanders in the playoffs. Sure, it would be great for New York hockey and for the mainstream media around here to pretend like they care about hockey and it would be good fuel to rekindling the fire of a once-strong rivalry. But if the Rangers don’t win, it’s a disaster.

Even after Chris Kreider and Ryan McDonagh scored 23 seconds apart to tie the game and quiet Islanders fans in their own building and incite raucous “Let’s Go Rangers!” chants, I felt the same way about a potential playoff series. Ryan Strome helped me remember why I had been against an April or May meeting with a pair of goals to give the Islanders their third two-goal lead of the game. But then everything changed.

Derek Stepan scored 2:42 after Strome’s second goal to cut the Islanders’ lead to 5-4 and just 1:37 later, Martin St. Louis scored for the first time since Jan. 10 to tie the game at 5. The Rangers had come all the way from a two-goal deficit for the second time in as many periods and 7:26 later, Kevin Klein scored the eventual game-winner to give the Rangers a 6-5 lead and their first lead over the Islanders since Derick Brassard scored 3:50 into the second period to give the Rangers a 2-1 lead on Oct. 14. And that’s when I decided I’m all in on a Rangers-Islanders playoff series.

I was wrong to not want the teams to meet in April or May before the same way the officials were wrong on Monday to take Tanner Glass and Matt Martin to the box for unsportsmanlike conduct before they could give the Coliseum the only thing that had been missing from the game. The Rangers had just scored twice in 23 seconds to tie the game forcing Jack Capuano to use his timeout and the Islanders’ portion of the Coliseum had been stifled by “Let’s Go Rangers!” chants. In that moment with that textbook chain of events leading to a fight and to Glass and Martin lining up next to each other, the officials have to recognize the situation and let it happen. The stage was set for two willing participants to drop the gloves, but they were stopped by the 2015 version of the NHL.

Well, I’m no longer going to be on the side of the argument that doesn’t want to see Rangers-Islanders this spring. New York City needs this, Long Island needs this, the Rangers want this, the Islanders want this and hockey deserves this. One last time before the Islanders close out the Coliseum and move to Brooklyn for obstructed viewpoints and a non-centered overhead scoreboard, the Rangers and Islanders need a two-week war like the old days when “Rock and Roll Part 2” and “Machinehead” were used the way that Macklemore and Avicii are now. Five regular-season meetings to determine the “Best Team in New York” isn’t a real barometer for measuring success (even though Islanders fans desperately want it to be), only a seven-game series is.

So give me Rangers-Islanders this April or May. Give the Rangers a chance to be the team that closes the Coliseum and the team that sends the Islanders off the Island and to Brooklyn after an emotional handshake line. Give the Rangers a chance to silence the “Yes! Yes! Yes!” chants for the summer and the opportunity to return the Islanders fans that have come out of the woodwork to chirp about four-plus months of good hockey after 20 years of bad hockey. Give the Rangers a chance to end the Islanders’ season.

Before Monday night, I didn’t want a Rangers-Islanders playoff series. Now I don’t just want it, I need it.

Henrik Lundqvist has always had to prove himself. He had to prove himself when he was selected in the seventh round, 205th overall in the 2000 draft by the Rangers (62 picks behind goaltender Brandon Snee, who the Rangers picked two rounds ahead of Lundqvist). He had to prove himself when he was splitting time with Kevin Weekes in the 2005-06 season. He had to prove himself when he let up six goals against the Devils in Game 1 of the 2005-06 Eastern Conference quarterfinals and was benched for Weekes in Game 2. Even after winning the 2011-12 Vezina, leading the league in shutouts twice, becoming the Rangers’ all-time wins leader and being the sole reason for any of their success since the 2004-05 lockout, he somehow needed to more to shut people up.

Last spring when Lundqvist single-handedly carried the Rangers back against the Penguins to save the season by allowing just three goals total in Games 5, 6 and 7 and then led them to a series win over the Canadiens and then did everything he could but score goals to try to beat the Kings in the Final, he finally silenced most of the critics. That’s “most” not “all”. There’s still this idea that Lundqvist needs to put his name on the Cup to solidify what he has accomplished or that it won’t mean anything. But the people that believe that notion are people like Michael Kay (and most likely his listeners too, if there are any) and not people that live in real life. Because under that theory, Corey Crawford, Antti Niemi, Marc-Andre Fleury, Chris Osgood and every lesser goalie that has gotten their name on the Cup is better than Lundqvist.

For nearly his entire career, Henrik Lundqvist has been the Rangers. He has stood on his head in the regular season and done it again in the playoffs, doing everything humanly possible someone who can’t score goals can do. He has been surrounded by horrific offensive teams for most of his career and watched the organization decide to build a defensive core from scratch while he entered his prime. Despite this, the Rangers have been in the playoffs in eight of the nine seasons since the 2004-05 lockout, thanks to Lundqvist.

In the last six seasons, the Rangers have reached the postseason in five of those six years. In that time, they are 32-37, which means Lundqvist is 32-37 in the playoffs over that time (the go-to argument point for any Lundqvist critic is always his playoff record). In those 37 playoff losses, the Rangers have scored 57 goals or 1.54 goals per game. Here is the breakdown by goals scored in the losses and how many times they scored each amount of goals:

0 goals: 8
1 goal: 10
2 goals: 14
3 goals: 3
4 or more goals: 2

That’s 18 playoff losses when the Rangers couldn’t score more than one goal and 32 when they couldn’t score more than two.

I was always worried that Glen Sather would waste Lundqvist’s prime and career by building mediocre teams around him and wasting the chance at having a Vezina-winning franchise goalie. I figured Lundqvist’s career would come and go and we would be stuck watching another Mike Dunham-esque era eventually, always waiting for another Lundqvist to come around. But over the last few years, as that young defensive core grew into reliable and stable veterans, Sather has turned over the forwards on the team to build a consistent source of offense. And magically, the Rangers made it to the Stanley Cup Final last year and have appeared in two of the last three Eastern Conference finals.

When I heard that Lundqvist was missing Wednesday night’s game against the Bruins because he was hit in the throat two games prior on Saturday, I was nervous, but thought it was for precautionary reasons. (Then again, if the Rangers were going to be cautious, wouldn’t he have been removed from Saturday’s game or not have played on Monday?) When I heard that he could miss a few weeks, I was a little more than nervous. When I heard he could miss four to six weeks, I was depressed. When I heard he could have had a stroke as a result of the injury, I was in shock. How could the face of the franchise, who is signed up to be the Rangers goalie through 2020-21, not be looked at more carefully than he was after withering around in pain on Saturday? How could he have been not checked enough with a potentially life-threatening risk in play?

It sounds like Lundqvist is getting better and will be better with time. The problem is the whole “time” thing. Fortunately, the Rangers’ 18-5-0 run from Dec. 8 through the announcement that Lundqvist would miss Wednesday’s game has them with 65 points in 51 games and even if they were to go say 16-15-0 and play one-game-over-.500 hockey for the rest of the season, they would finish with 97 points, which would be one more than total from last season. And let’s say the Rangers did play .516 hockey for their last 31 games, the Panthers, who are in the ninth spot in the East would have to win 20 of their 31 remaining games or find a way to get 40 points in those games just to tie the Rangers. The Rangers are going to the playoffs. They just need Lundqvist to be 100 percent healthy and 100 percent ready when they get there.

If the Rangers hadn’t gone on that two-month run and built up enough of a cushion to be in the thick of the playoff picture rather than on the bubble of it where they usually are, we would have gotten to see what life is like without Lundqvist. We would have gotten to see what life is like not knowing what it’s like to know you have an all-world goalie in your net every night and someone who can steal games and build winning streaks. We would have gotten to see what would have happened if some insane fans had gotten their way last season and Sather didn’t give Lundqvist a contract extension. It’s not a life any Rangers fan should want to live. Thankfully four wins and eight points separate the Rangers from the closest non-playoff team and hopefully that lead never gets to the point of worrying about.

The Rangers are now 1-1-1 without Henrik Lundqvist and with Cam Tablot as their starter. On Wednesday, Talbot became the first Rangers goalie not named Henrik Lundqvist to beat the Bruins since April 8, 2006. On Saturday, he allowed three goals in a tough loss to the league-best Predators. On Sunday, he gave up three goals in an overtime loss to the Stars. It’s as exactly .500 as you can get from a backup goalie with the good, bad and so-so results that come with a win, loss and a tie. But it’s exactly what the Rangers need. It would be nice if Talbot could become Lundqvist 2.0, which he has looked like at times, but it’s unnecessary. They just need him to keep the team afloat, which is what they didn’t have in 2010-11 when Lundqvist was asked to start the last 25 games of the season after Martin Biron broke his collarbone. (And luckily Lundqvist did as the Rangers made the playoffs on the last day of the season.)

The Rangers are going to the playoffs unless a Mets-like collapse happens and all Tablot has to do is make sure that doesn’t happen while Lundqvist is out. It doesn’t matter what seed the Rangers are or who they play once they get in. The other seven Eastern Conference playoff teams are all capable of making a run to the Stanley Cup Final this season and the path to get there could be the hardest ever. They’re going to have to get by three of the seven teams to get back to where they were last June and all of them present a difficult challenge.

This team can survive for now without Henrik Lundqvist. But that’s for now. Eventually they will need their king back if they want to get to where they were last year and where they haven’t been in 21 years.