Islanders’ season effectively over after listless performance
ELMONT, N.Y. >> Turn out the lights, the party’s over. Just about, anyway. The New York Islanders delivered something of a listless performance in their Game 4 loss to the Carolina Hurricanes at UBS Arena, dropping the contest by a 5-2 score that made it seem a bit closer than it actually was.
Just two nights after potting the fastest four goals in Stanley Cup Playoffs history, the only two they got on Sunday — from Adam Pelech and Bo Horvat — were with the game already well out of reach, and they’re now on the brink of elimination being down three games to one in the best-of-seven Eastern Conference Round 1 Series.
With Game 5 set for Raleigh on Tuesday night, given the Hurricanes home playoff success of late, it seems hard to believe that those lights will come back on in the shadow of Belmont Park three days afterwards. For that to happen, however, Horvat knows that a series comeback can’t happen all in one night, wherever it may be.
“We can’t look past the next game,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of work to do, obviously. It’s do or die for us right now, so we’ve got approach it that way here in the next few days.”
That turnaround may very well need to start with Horvat himself; the 28-year-old forward was the team’s big acquisition just prior to the NHL All-Star Game from the Vancouver Canucks, and while he was signed to an eight-year, $68 million contract extension shortly thereafter, hasn’t quite seemed to have been as quick and seamless of a fit in their lineup as many had hoped.
With 31 goals in 49 games for the Canucks at the time of the deal, he potted just seven in his last 30 games on the Island, and his late-Game 4 goal was his first appearance on the scoresheet during this postseason.
“I think I can do a lot better,” he said. “I think I’m doing a lot of good things away from the puck, winning faceoffs and doing that kind of stuff, but at the end of the day I have to find ways to score big goals and get on the scoresheet not in a 5-1 or a 5-2 game. I need to find ways to make it meaningful, and I know that I have to be better.”
Making matters worse, while some of the Islanders best players have been anything but, the Hurricanes had to rely on some of their organizational depth on Sunday, with American Hockey League callup Mackenzie MacEachern
making a big impact on the series in his debut in it.
Having spent the entire regular season in the minors after missing the first few months with injuries of his own, the 29-year-old got the call after Teuvo Teravainen’s early-series injury, and stepped into a bigger
role in Game 5 after Jack Drury was lost for the game following a big check from behind into the boards by Ryan Pulock.
Hurricanes head coach Rod Brind’Amour said he “didn’t have much choice” but to insert MacEachern into that slot, and he delivered
with a goal and an assist to help push the Islanders to the brink.
“It’s a pretty easy group to step into,” he said. “I got to know a handful of them in training camp, but they’re an unbelievable group, a bunch of nice guys. So, they made me feel
pretty welcome right away. It was just an unbelievable experience. I played a couple of playoff games with St. Louis, but it was in the bubble, so it wasn’t the atmosphere we saw this afternoon, so I’m just trying to take it all in.”