Storyline: One game does not a season make, but a loss to the Pens Wednesday night could have had disastrous consequences.
Admit it, Islanders fans. You couldn’t have felt good when the Islanders blew a three-goal lead last Wednesday night and had the Penguins tie the game in the third period.
Here we go again! The Islanders have blown leads and have found creative ways to lose this year. It has become a habit, a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Anders Lee (photo, Mike Stobe/Getty Images)
But sometimes you can get saved from yourself. With 27 seconds to go in overtime, Anders Lee tipped home Thomas Hickey’s shot to give the Islanders the lead. The Islanders went on to a 5-3 victory over the Penguins at Barclays Center.
Make no mistake. though. Had the Islanders lost this game it would have been the worst loss of the season–a loss that would have been difficult to recover from.
It has been a tough start for the Islanders. The team has had a hard time scoring goals and has struggled on the power play. That continued Wednesday; the team was 0-for-4 on power plays against the Penguins.
They’ve had awful goaltending and the defense has given up plays. No one expected any of it, certainly not the players and coaches.
The good thing is that the season is a marathon, not a sprint. There’s plenty of time for the Islanders to get on a run. The important thing is to be in the Eastern Conference race in February.
But, still, a team can take only so many losses. It wears on players. And that may be the case right now.
John Tavares needs to play better, consistently (photo, Mike Stobe/Getty Images)
On Wednesday, though, the Islanders dug deep and found a way to tie the game. That’s encouraging. It took a hero to get it done. And that hero was Lee. He found a way to make it happen, and he has done that more times than John Tavares has for the Islanders this year. Tavares comes up short too often. He disappears during stretch of games and contributes absolutely nothing.
Excuses don’t help, like he has no linemates or he’s trying to create chemistry with Andrew Ladd and Jason Chimera. Perhaps Tavares just takes time off until January. But what the Islanders need is someone who can get it done, not management that makes excuses for an overrated superstar.
The good news is that Lee found a way. The not-so-good news is that the Islanders tend to pass rather than shoot. They need to be aggressive in the crease. They need to get down and dirty by the goaltenders.
They look stationary too often. They play rope-a-dope hockey. They wait for the other team to make a mistake.
That’s not only passive hockey. It’s losing hockey. And it has been the Islanders’ identity during the first two months of the season. They need to play with a sense of urgency. They get off to slow starts too often, and that has caused many losses already.
The Islanders are not an elite team. They need to be more active. They have to dictate the puck.
Islanders beat Pens (photo, OOYUZ)
Again, though, the good news is that they played a good game against the Penguins. They earned the win by getting off to a good start and responding after blowing a 3-0 lead. This has to be encouraging for the team.
But that win is going to be meaningless if the Islanders can’t sustain good hockey play. A winning streak would be a step in the right direction. (And a 3-0 win against the Caps on Thursday night means two wins in a row.)
This win does not make the season, but a loss could have broken the season.
