The rivalry was established in late 1971, when the National Hockey League awarded a second franchise in the New York metropolitan area.

The Rangers won games five and six to end the Islanders' season, but lost to Montreal in the Stanley Cup Finals.

The Islanders were crowned Stanley Cup champions once again as they beat the Minnesota North Stars in the Finals.

After Islanders legends Bryan Trottier, Mike Bossy, Denis Potvin, Clark Gillies, Brent Sutter, Pat LaFontaine, John Tonelli, Bob Bourne and Bobby Nystrom retired or left the team, the Islanders did not achieve the same success as they did in the 1980s.

The Rangers swept the Islanders, outscoring them 22–3, and then beat the Capitals, New Jersey Devils, and Vancouver Canucks to win their first Stanley Cup since 1940.

The Rangers gained Wayne Gretzky who helped them back to the conference finals in 1997, but they were eliminated by Philadelphia.

[4] The Islanders' first overall draft pick in 2009, John Tavares, scored 20+ goals in the past six seasons and led them back to the playoffs in 2013, 2015 and 2016.

In the 2015–16 season, the Islanders moved from Nassau Coliseum to the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, officially making it a true intra-city rivalry within New York City.

The Islanders then completed their first-ever season sweep of the Rangers, en route to winning their first playoff series since 1993 defeating the Florida Panthers four games to two.

In the 2018–19 season, the Islanders began to split their home games between Barclays Center and Nassau Coliseum.

[8] Later in the season, the Islanders would get their revenge, winning both games at Madison Square Garden,[9] and ultimately, both teams finished with a 2–2 record against each other.

In the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, the rivalry was mostly one-sided in favor of the dominant Islanders, who ultimately won four Stanley Cup championships in a row during that time.

The Rangers won their fourth Stanley Cup in 1994 and have experienced much playoff success since, including five appearances in the Eastern Conference finals in 1997, 2012, 2014, 2015 and 2022 (where they lost to two of their biggest rivals other than the Islanders, the Philadelphia Flyers (in 1997) and New Jersey Devils (in 2012)), as well as a trip to the Stanley Cup Finals in 2014.

The Islanders, on the other hand, did not win a playoff series after 1993 until their victory over the Florida Panthers in 2016 but have gone to the Eastern Conference Finals in 2020 and 2021.

In 1975, the Islanders made their first trip to the NHL playoffs, facing the heavily favored Rangers in a best-of-three first-round series.

The teams met again in the 1979 playoffs; this time the underdog Rangers were victorious, eliminating the heavily favored Islanders in six games and earning a spot in the Stanley Cup Finals.

At each home game, Ranger fans engage in perhaps their most popular chant: whistling the song "Let's Go Band" and punctuating it with "Potvin sucks!"

This is a reference to retired Islander, Hall of Fame defenseman Denis Potvin, who angered Rangers fans by breaking center Ulf Nilsson's ankle.

[17] Lastly, Rangers fans taunted Islanders goaltender Rick DiPietro by chanting "DP Sucks!"

Rangers winger Theoren Fleury used the chant as an excuse for flapping his arms to taunt Islanders enforcer Eric Cairns.

One well-known incident at an Islanders–Flyers game in 2003 turned a holiday promotion at Nassau Coliseum into an on-ice shoving match between Rangers and Islanders fans in Santa suits.