Tough ’ville to swallow
Stout Isles give up backbreaking go-ahead goal with 7 seconds left
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The Islanders finally got the defensive effort they’ve spent much of the season trying to find. Then they wasted it. Their offense came up short and a third-period lead was tossed away on Saturday in a 3-1 loss to the Predators after a freak game-winner that extended a pair of streaks the Islanders would very much like to see broken. First, they have not beaten Nashville in 10 tries dating back to October 2017. Second, it has been a month on the dot since they last won two straight games.
For that, they have Alexandre Carrier’s game-winner with 7.9 seconds to go to thank — a freak goal that hopped off the stick of Scott Mayfield and over the head of Ilya Sorokin, leaving the Islanders point-less in a game all 17,474 people in the building thought was going to overtime.
“There’s not many worse ways [to lose],” Kyle Palmieri told The Post.
“If you think that’s not a bad bounce then we’re seeing different things,” Anders Lee told The Post.
“I have to look at it,” Noah Dobson told The Post. “But obviously the goal itself, kind of a fluke bounce.”
The problem for the Islanders is that right now, they cannot afford to be taking silver linings.
You’d say they’ve been treading water but even that would be generous for a team that has gone 5-6-3 and slipped down the standings since Dec. 15 — losing another two points after all three of the teams surrounding them in the Metropolitan Division won on Saturday.
If the defensive effort the Islanders turned in on Saturday is sustainable, that is a good sign. But the new-look lines that produced four goals and a comeback win against Toronto on Thursday night did not have much juice here in Nashville.
Both teams kept the other to the outside and limited grade-A chances throughout the game. Even on their respective power plays, neither side could do much.
Of course, it did not hurt that Juuse Saros and Ilya Sorokin were in the nets, and both star netminders were very much on their game with 24 and 25 saves, respectively.
It took 52 minutes of scoreless hockey before Jean-Gabriel Pageau finally broke the deadlock in the third period, redirecting Noah Dobson’s shot from the right point past Saros.
But that was followed by Kyle Palmieri tripping Luke Evangelista and the Predators promptly taking advantage, as Evangelista tied the game at one right before the penalty expired.
“Thought he was gonna shoot it,” Palmieri said. “Went down to block it and clipped his feet and he went down.”
And in the dying seconds of regulation, Matt Martin’s failed clearing attempt gave Carrier one last look, resulting in the worst gut-punch loss in a season where that is a hard title to claim.
An empty-net goal from Jusso Parssinen added another goal to the tally before the buzzer.
“We tried to go through the middle of the ice. It’s a cardinal sin in our zone,” coach Lane Lambert said. “We turned the puck over. They ended up getting a shot. Breaks a stick. Ally-oops over. “Just kind of a calamity of errors.” For what chances there were early in the game, the Islanders had the better of them, winning the shot count and high-danger chance count through 40 minutes. But even those were sparing, with free ice a rarity.
There is some irony that on the night the Islanders faced Barry Trotz’s new team for the first time, they played one of their most Trotz-like games of the season.
“Just a muck,” Lee said. “Grindy game. Defensive. Not a lot out there on either side. That’s a good, hard road game that we played.”
This represented one of the more winnable games of this four-game trip on paper and proved to be so on the ice. Now the Islanders will need to get a result over a tough back-toback in Minnesota and Winnipeg to stay above water on their swing through the Central Division.
In the meantime, you can throw this one in the bin of lost opportunities.
“You saw the play, you saw the bounce,” Lee said. “Tough one to swallow.”