BUFFALO — A road trip that started on a high ended with a bang.
The Islanders’ six-game winning streak that catapulted them back into playoff contention loomed large in the rearview mirror on Thursday, as the visiting team fell apart with a heartbreaking second straight 4-0 loss to the Sabers. And a tired performance at KeyBank Center.
“For some reason, I thought we were flat tonight,” coach Patrick Roy said. “We didn’t play a good game.”
Instead of taking the momentum home, the Islanders are trudging back to New York, much in need of revisiting the games they recently unlocked on just one solitary day off before back-to-back games against Ottawa and the Rangers. .
This was a night where just about everything that could go wrong happened, as the Islanders struggled to put together the basic parts of their game, looking out of sync all night while passing and receiving the puck. It did not work.
“[Ilya Sorokin] Tonight was incredible. It could have been a lot worse,” Bo Horvat said. “If you want to win hockey games, you have to be a lot better than that.”
The Islanders’ first shot on goal didn’t come until 10:15 into the game. It then took him until the 7:20 mark to get the second frame after he scored one in his 30 seconds of the second period. Shortly after, the train veered off the tracks.
At one point, it looked like Sorokin might be able to bail the Islanders out, but the goaltender was at his best, especially in the first period, including a great glove save from Peyton Krebs.
But just 19 seconds after Anders Lee was sent off for interference early in the second period, Victor Olofsson found a way past the netminder and beat him with a sharp look from below the right circle.
Just 5:19 minutes later, the rout began.
Dylan Cozens doubled Buffalo’s lead after Sorokin freed Connor Clifton’s rebound in the middle of the ice. Henri Jokiharju then took a shot through traffic, but it hit Zach Benson’s stick and deflected into the goal, and Roy lost the ensuing challenge for goaltender interference at 9:41.
“We didn’t perform very well. When you don’t perform very well in a game like this, I think it’s best to just shoot as many pucks into the net as possible and get the pucks deep,” Matt Martin said. He spoke after returning to action after the game. – Absent due to upper body injury. “We’re trying to do it, but we probably made too many plays and we just weren’t as sharp and didn’t have the coordination that we had the last few weeks.”
Meanwhile, the Islanders never looked like a threat until the game got out of reach. The power play went 4-0, with the most eventful moments coming after Horvat hit the post and Lee hit Clifton. A Buffalo defender brought down Pierre Engvall.
However, both came with the Islanders already down 3-0, and in the latter Lee was given a roughing penalty in addition to a grappling major, resulting in the Islanders losing their own power play for the 19th time this season. This resulted in the invalidation of the .
It was a resilient performance, but this one was not to be, as Roy went 5-for-6 early, before Benson added an empty netter.
Rather, this was the kind of performance the Islanders couldn’t afford, for reasons that have as much to do with their own confidence as the playoff race. Throughout the season, they have struggled to maintain a high level of play for extended periods of time, but after scoring 13 goals in the first two games of this trip, the Islanders are currently He has scored zero points.
The only good news is that even though Tampa beat the Rangers, the Islanders remained in second place in the wild card as the Flyers and Red Wings both lost.
Still, if they don’t get back on their feet quickly, it won’t last long.
