It might be time to worry about the Islanders.
It’s just nine games out of 82 and the narrative can change on a dime. But losing 3-1 on home ice Tuesday night to a struggling Anaheim team, with another night of noticeably low attendance and the Islanders looking tired even as they racked up a shot-count advantage is an alarm bell if there ever were one.
At 3-4-2, the Islanders are below NHL-.500 for the first time this season, the sort of numbers you would expect from, well, the Ducks.
Not from a team with aspirations to make the playoffs and perhaps do something once there.
Though they ran up favorable Corsi numbers, that belies a lack of intensity and urgency that was evident until too late in this one, and as early as warm-ups, when multiple players stood still as statues during line rushes.
Whatever the Deserve-to-Win-O’Meter says, the Islanders looked flat and paid for it, with a pair of goals allowed on the penalty kill amplifying a four-on-five problem that has carried over from last season in full.
It took until 5:29 of the third, a few seconds after a long five-on-three had ended, for the Islanders to finally find some offense, with Mathew Barzal putting to rest what had been a nightmarish game by converting a one-timer from the left circle.
That cut what had been a 2-0 deficit in half and gave the Islanders some badly needed momentum, but it couldn’t negate the game’s first 40 minutes.
The Islanders, from then on, had the kind of pressure that had been missing, but ran into a problem in the form of goalie Lukas Dostal, who turned in an excellent 41-save night and helped the Ducks do what the Islanders rarely can: Hang onto a lead.
Frank Vatrano sealed it on an empty-net goal with just under a minute left.
So, as much as the Islanders will feel they deserved more, they are going on the road losers of two consecutive games.
Nobody can control for being without Anthony Duclair, but right now, one problem after another seems to be compounding on the Islanders.
Without Duclair, their top line is incomplete. And unlike last season, when Barzal and Bo Horvat largely made up for that through their successful partnership, the dynamic duo has not gotten going, with Barzal yet to score a five-on-five goal, though converting on the power play Tuesday doesn’t hurt.
That finally reached a head on Tuesday, first with Simon Holmstrom losing his spot to Casey Cizikas, then with Barzal losing his spot to Holmstrom as coach Patrick Roy put the lines in a blender throughout the last two periods.
The fourth line, meanwhile, is a rotating cast. Pierre Engvall and Hudson Fasching got a turn on either side of Kyle MacLean on Tuesday making it six different combinations in the last six games, none of which have been satisfactory.
Roy and Lou Lamoriello have both said as much, and Roy said even before Tuesday’s game that Matt Martin would draw back in on Wednesday night in Columbus.
And then there is the penalty kill — which has picked up where it left off last season. That kept on going in the first period Tuesday when a failed clearing attempt led directly to Leo Carlsson’s tip-in to give the Ducks a 1-0 lead 14:06 into the night.
Troy Terry added a second power play goal for Anaheim at 14:07 of the second when he knocked in Mason McTavish’s cross-crease feed to make it 2-0.
This was a loss in which the Islanders controlled the shot count and controlled the puck for much of the night, which made it the sort of loss you could dismiss if those concerns did not exist prior to Tuesday.
All the training camp noise about getting off to a hot start and avoiding the late-season dramatics to secure a playoff spot now feels long gone.
Right now, the Islanders need to just put together a good 60 minutes.
