Lame old story
Islanders go back to losing in same frustrating way in Roy’s 2nd game
The honeymoon period with a new coach lasts for approximately as long as it takes for the team to lose.
So the honeymoon period for Patrick Roy ended, at least in that sense, on Tuesday night as the Islanders lost 3-2 to the Golden Knights, even if the coach liked how his team played.
Through two games coaching the Islanders, Roy has seen enough to get a microcosm of the season. The Islanders on Sunday won an ugly game in which they didn’t look quite right for the first 40 minutes and on Tuesday, lost a game in which they played well for long stretches but saw lapses at key moments cost them two points.
“Maybe we should have lost against Dallas and we should have won tonight, but that’s the nature of hockey,” Roy said. “Sometimes you don’t necessarily get rewarded for what you do. But I know one thing: If we keep progressing like we are right now, we’ll win a lot of games.”
He wasn’t wrong that the Isles played a much cleaner game than they had two nights prior. But the common thread between the two games is the same as it’s been all season: inconsistency over 60 minutes that can overshadow any of the good the Islanders do on any given night.
This is the crux of Roy’s challenge. It is not just about getting the Islanders to buy into his way of playing. It is about getting them to play that way for 60 minutes, which Lane Lambert tried and failed to do for 45 games.
Down 3-1 in the third, the Islanders did put together an effort at a second straight comeback win under Roy.
They failed to convert consecutive power-play chances early in the third, but after the Islanders took a penalty of their own, they cut the lead to 3-2, with Jean-Gabriel Pageau scoring off Simon Holmstrom’s shorthanded feed at the 9:26 mark.
But a third power-play opportunity represented their best chance of tying, and the Isles could not get anything to go.
“We had a little bit of trouble setting up [on the power play],” Kyle Palmieri told The Post. “But once we got set up I thought we had a couple good looks. … Getting in the zone and making clean plays and getting set up was something we can do better. We’ll find a way to regroup and get it all going.”
What makes the loss tough is that for a lot of the night, the Islanders looked pretty good. The shot count was 43-27, scoring chances were 39-14 and highdanger chances were 16-6, per Natural Stat Trick. The Isles held the puck for long periods of time and made Adin Hill work.
But after Roy stressed cutting down on turnovers, the Islanders failed to do just that, and it formed the crux of this loss.
After Brock Nelson tied the game at one following one of those periods of sustained possession early in the second period, things looked like they were going on all cylinders.
But that was when the mistakes started coming, with Sheldon Rempal taking advantage of Scott Mayfield’s interference penalty to score his first NHL goal on the power play. That was soon followed by Nic Roy putting in Jonathan Marchessault’s rebound after Noah Dobson tried to go up the middle through the neutral zone and passed it straight to Ivan Barbashev.
Vegas’ first goal of the night, too, followed a defensive-zone turnover, with Barbashev tipping Alex Pietrangelo’s shot after a bad clearing attempt from Adam Pelech.
“We just gotta make better decisions at times, managing [the puck] a little bit,” Dobson said. “But if we play like that most nights, we’re gonna get good results.”
“Good game, bad result” was the message in a room that has not yet lost its optimism. And Roy was not wrong in saying Tuesday was far less of a scrappy effort than Sunday.
The problem with painting a loss as progress is that the Islanders are 47 games into the season and in a playoff race. So the progress that was made Tuesday needs to translate to a win on Thursday in Roy’s Montreal homecoming — and a few more wins after that.
“We have to find a way to put that puck in the net,” Roy said. “But at the same time, it would be a shame if we have our head between our legs after a performance like that.”