DETROIT — Next game, a third-period lead, then another loss.
At this point, what else can you expect from the Islanders, who magically bounced what should have been a great road trip to three losses?
Thursday's game, which ended in a 2-1 loss to the Red Wings on Lucas Raymond's game-winning goal with less than a minute left, could have been better than Tuesday's game against the Flames if the coach had asked for more of a punch to the gut. It felt like I was watching another cut of the defeat.
As a result, the Islanders were 7-8-5 in the fourth quarter of the season, allowing as many tying or game-winning goals in the final five minutes of the third game as they actually won.
“It's the worst for Elijah.” [Sorokin]” Jean-Gabriel Pageau told the Post. “He was solid for us throughout the game, but we gave up that chance, so it's disappointing now.”
Like Tuesday, the Islanders played a low-event game Thursday, ceding possession of the puck for most of the night, leading 1-0 and appearing to take control in the second period. He let go of the rope in the third period.
Including Saturday's loss to the Kraken, the Isles led 2-1 in the third inning and allowed a tying run almost immediately, but ended their longest road trip of the season with three straight wins.
This is a recipe for a quiet plane ride home that feels like a pre-Thanksgiving tipping point.
“I don't know what to say,” Sorokin said after stopping 29 shots. “Two big goals in the last five minutes, that’s it.”
The penalty kill, one of the Islanders' fatal flaws for most of the season, was excellent in the first two periods Thursday.
On the power play, against the league's second-place Red Wings, he squandered three chances in a 4-on-5 game, with Sorokin scoring a sharp shot at the net and the penalty squad doing a good job in front of him.
Still, they were unable to build a 1-0 lead for the second straight game after Simon Holmstrom tipped in Scott Mayfield's shot from the top of the zone and scored 5:51 into the game.
And so we enter the third period, with the same old atmosphere that we've all grown accustomed to over the past 13 months intact.
The Islanders applied pressure in the same situation against Calgary, which put them at a disadvantage, and then applied pressure again against the Red Wings.
It looked like Sorokin's heroics would be enough to save them, but at 15:14 of the third inning, Jonathan Berggren hit a breakaway after Alexander Romanov's stick broke to tie the score at 1-1. I caught up.
Unlike Calgary, the Islanders did not even play in overtime.
After the Red Wings won a wall fight, Raymond picked up the puck and put it into the net with 51 seconds left in regulation, giving Detroit a 2-1 lead and an instant victory.
“Calgary scored on the power play and got a penalty. The stick broke tonight,” coach Patrick Roy said. “Every night it seems like something different is happening. But I will say this: we had a chance to score a goal that hurt them and we just didn't get it. It all overlaps.”
The Islanders are still missing four regulars from the lineup, but they have proven over the past 12 days at Northwest and Detroit that they are capable of winning games without some of their best players.
What they didn't do was take advantage of that ability.
Even though the Isles had a chance to win all five games, a 5-2 scoring outburst in Vancouver (the only game of the trip in which the Isles built a lead) was their only win in five games. Ta.
Even if the team is playing through injuries, even if it's a tough schedule, even if it's a long trip, that's unacceptable.
They're not out of the playoff hunt, but in an Eastern Conference filled with mediocre to bad teams, that's far from the case.
But the Islanders could have climbed to the top of that mountain over the past few weeks and created some real momentum in the standings.
Instead, they fall back into the morass of mediocrity.
