Barclays blackout
Power failure portends on-ice flop by Isles
Fans want the lights turned out on Islanders games at Barclays Center — just preferably not in the middle of a game.
But once a 17-minute delay to fix the lights was over Wednesday night and the third period began, the decisive miscue by the Islanders was in full view.
A miscommunication between defenseman Thomas Hickey and goalie Robin Lehner on a loose puck in front of the Islanders’ net opened the door for Thomas Nosek to stuff home the game-winner in a 3-2 Golden Knights victory.
The Islanders (14-12-4) were right there again through 40 minutes, entering the third period knotted up for the fifth time in their past seven games. But instead of finishing off the defending Western Conference champs, they were left ruing their latest missed opportunity after their sixth loss in eight games.
“For us, the margin of error has been small,” coach Barry Trotz said. “A lot of those er- rors have been on us. … It’s just a little frustrating we find ways to give teams easy goals. The group’s working really hard to make it really hard to defend and we’ll find a way to give one easy one up.”
A 2-1 Islanders lead disappeared because of two goals the Islanders wanted back. The first came in the second period, when Nick Leddy’s clearing attempt was picked off by William Karlsson and ripped into the back of the net.
The game-winner appeared just as avoidable. A giveaway by Ryan Pulock in his own zone left the puck bouncing in front of the crease between Hickey and Lehner. Hickey looked like he was ready to knock it away before ceding to Lehner, who was equally indecisive in trying to clamp his glove over it. Instead, Nosek came crashing in to take it for himself and put the Golden Knights (18-14-1) ahead for good at 3:32 of the third period.
“I think it looks easy, it looks like it’s there, but there are blind spots for the goalie and you’re trying to communicate,” Hickey said. “Wanted him to cover it and he didn’t see it, he didn’t know where it was. It’s on the both of us to communicate and get it out of harm or recover it, but we talked about it. … A split-second thing.”
Lehner had played well in his previous two starts with little to show for it. In games against the Bruins and Penguins, he had allowed just one goal in each and stopped a combined 58-of-60 shots, before losing both in shootouts. But the Golden Knights got to him for three goals on just 17 shots.
Lehner let the first shot he faced get by, a power-play goal by Jonathan Marchessault 34 seconds into the game, but Anthony Beauvillier got it back for the Islanders minutes later when he pushed home a one-timer from Johnny Boychuk.
Adam Pelech gave the Islanders their only lead of the night at 11:19 of the second, when he took a drop-back pass from Mathew Barzal and wristed it top-shelf past Marc-Andre Fleury (23 saves).
But the offense dried up from there. The Islanders have scored just 14 goals over their past eight games.
“We got to find a way to win these games, playing against good hockey teams and not giving them too much quality-wise and then they just find a win,” Hickey said. “We’re the team that needs to find a way to win those.”