Isles dry up as Preds finish off N.Y. sweep
PREDATORS 4 ISLANDERS 3
It’s like the image of those Same Old Islanders is dissipating, albeit slowly.
Because this team did not open their home schedule with a complete dud, although the 4-3 loss to the Predators at Barclays Center on Saturday night hardly stands as a work of art. What has been made clear already through two games under new coach Barry Trotz is that they play with far more structure, they go harder into battles, and their special teams compete with a plan — but they still make a handful of costly mistakes that can undercut a good effort.
So they were happy hanging with the reigning Presidents Trophy winners, happy that they pushed Nashville right to the end. But they’re not happy with the end result.
“It’s tough not getting a point,” said Mat Barzal, who seems to be stepping right back into his place after winning the Calder Trophy last year, registering a goal and an assist. “I think we worked hard the last two periods, and their goalie made some big saves. Can’t be too frustrated with it.”
After the sloppy game, the Islanders (1-1-0) played in Carolina in the season-opener on Thursday, they had to be happier with this effort. The Hurricanes had peppered goalie Thomas Greiss with 45 shots, eventually pulling out a 2-1 overtime win courtesy of Barzal’s late-game heroics.
But Greiss did not see the same amount of action in this one against the Predators (20-0), who opened their season with the twogame sweep of New York after beating the Rangers in the Garden on Thursday. Instead, Nashville managed just 23 stops on Greiss — and he managed just 19 saves.
But giving a team like Nashville great looks ends in only one conclusion, as the Rangers could attest to from their own moral victory on the other side of the East River.
“Overall, good effort, just didn’t get the result,” Trotz said. “Sometimes that’s what this game will do to you — you don’t get the result after you play pretty well, which I thought we did.”
The Islanders did hold the play for some short stretches, and they were shorthanded only once (for 1:40). They were physical when they needed to be, and only on a couple occasions were they totally out-skated by one of the fastest teams in the league.
Like the time when Ryan Johansen went wide on Thomas Hickey and then slipped a pass to the front for Viktor Arvidsson, who scored his second goal of the game at 16:42 of the second period to make it 4-2. Standing in front when Arvidsson shot was Josh Bailey, who had a pretty assertive game but was caught watching the puck at that moment.
“There are always things to work on,” Bailey said. “I like where our team’s at. We’re just going to try to keep going forward. Upwards and onwards.”
Bailey very quickly made up for it when he took a Barzal saucer pass and fired it right to Anders Lee in front, the new captain able to corral it and bang it in from close quarters like he has so many times before for a power-play goal that cut the lead to 4-3 with 28.8 seconds remaining in the second period.
But that is where it stood for all of the third, as Nashville backup goalie Juuse Saros (26 saves) shut it down when the good chances came, like Jordan Eberle’s golden opportunity from the slot that was stopped with 4:20 remaining in regulation.
“Commitment is undeniable from our group,” Trotz said. “The passion is undeniable. I thought we should have been able to pull out a point tonight.”
For a team that is set to play half of its home games back at Nassau Coliseum this season, they got a decent crowd of 12,163 in Brooklyn. But they are hoping to treat them to a season that is unlike the disappointments that have defined most of the recent past.
“Jitters are out,” Trotz said. “We’re in the thick of it now.”