Islanders blowing third-period leads is wasting their injury resiliency
CALGARY, Alberta — It’s not going to be the injuries that derail the Islanders season.
Even with nearly a third of their opening-night lineup on the shelf, the issue for the Islanders is the same it’s been for over a year: They are leaving points on the table by blowing third-period leads and winnable games.
The way the Islanders have responded without Mathew Barzal, Anthony Duclair, Alexander Romanov, Adam Pelech or Mike Reilly in the lineup has been, for the most part, excellent.
If anything, they are playing better hockey now than they were when healthy — a testament to the resiliency in the dressing room and organizational depth that took a step in the right direction this offseason.
Isaiah George has been a revelation on defense, the revamped top line has blown past expectations, Pierre Engvall has responded in the right way to his early-season demotion to the AHL.
The Islanders played their best game of the season in Vancouver on Thursday night and, early in Saturday’s game against the Kraken, looked like they were picking up where they left off.
Even with a different lineup, though, this turned into the same movie.
The Islanders appeared to have seized momentum in the third period, when Brock Nelson put them ahead, 2-1, with a shorthanded goal. Just 37 seconds later — after Seattle’s power play had ended — a miscommunication defending the rush gave Jared McCann an opening to tie it right back up again.
There was a lot of righteous indignation afterward over the failed challenge for goalie interference on Jamie Oleksiak’s game-winning goal, with coach Patrick Roy saying the Islanders “got robbed,” and it’s undeniably true that the league has a problem with its haphazard and inconsistent enforcement of that rule.
All that conversation, though, belied that the Islanders never should have been in a situation to give up the game in the last five minutes to begin with.
They played up ice for most of the afternoon. At five-on-five, they recorded 61.54 percent of scoring chances and 64.29 percent of high-danger chances, per Natural Stat Trick.
They got on the forecheck, cycled the puck and played the sort of game deserving of two points on the road.
They came away with zero. It’s far from the first time.
To their own detriment, this has become a thing that the Islanders do — part of their identity every bit as much as Matt Martin, Casey Cizikas and Cal Clutterbuck on the fourth line were for years. The Islanders blow games.
They gave up a tying goal with 50 seconds left in regulation against the Devils last Saturday and lost in overtime. They’ve lost twice by 1-0 scores this year and lost a third game, 2-0, on a late empty-netter. They blew a lead on opening night after Max Tsyplakov scored the go-ahead goal with 2:07 left in regulation, then lost in overtime.
They were up 3-0 in the first period at home against Florida and lost, 6-3. This all comes after a 2023-24 season in which blowing leads came easier to the Islanders than entering the offensive zone at five-on-four.
And, for the second year in a row, it’s on pace to make a difference between the Islanders scratching and clawing to get in the playoffs and being in with some ease.
It’s early in the season, and Roy was right on Saturday to say he loved how his team played.
But wins and losses matter, even in November, and the Islanders are sitting at 7-7-4 — NHL-.500 — when they could and should be in the mix for the Metropolitan Division lead against an underwhelming group of teams.
It’s the same old problem. And if the Islanders can work their way through all these injuries, it’s hard to fathom why they can’t seem to work their way through this.
