Carson Soucy gets measure of revenge on Rangers with his first Islanders goal

Twenty-four hours after the Islanders handed their honorary player of the game award, an Iron Man mask, to Ondrej Palat, it went to their other new acquisition, Carson Soucy.

For the defenseman who became the first player to cross the Rangers-Islanders divide via trade since Jyri Niemi did so in 2010, that capped what had to have been a pretty good 48 hours.

Soucy went from a team circling the drain to one in the midst of a playoff race, beat his old club twice and scored a goal against them at Madison Square Garden. Plus, he didn’t even need to find new living arrangements.

“Obviously, when you’re going against someone in your division, let alone your in-state rival, it’s nice to be on the winning side for the last two,” Soucy said after the Islanders capped a season-series sweep of the Rangers with a 2-1 victory. “Losing to these guys those first couple games kind of hurt.”

Soucy said Wednesday morning he didn’t know any players on the Islanders roster, just a couple of the athletic trainers who were in Vancouver and Minnesota with him. No matter, by Thursday night, the rest of the Islanders were talking about him as if he’d been with them the whole season.

“Soucy got us pretty fired up — just him getting traded from the Rangers, coming in, being a great guy on and off the ice,” Matthew Schaefer said. “So fun to meet him and ‘Latter. For him to get a goal, I think it’s kind of payback in a way: Once he gets traded and then he gets to score against this team, so it’s pretty cool.”