This is what it looks like when the season slips away in January.
Forget the season. This might be what it looks like to watch an entire era of a franchise come to an end.
Just a week ago, Lou Lamoriello was putting an optimistic spin on his team’s playoff chances. Now, after Thursday’s 5-3 defeat at home to the Flyers, the Islanders are eight points back of the last playoff spot in the East and just two points up on the last-place Sabres.
Technically, there still is a chance — nobody gets mathematically eliminated after 44 games, after all — but does this look like a playoff team to you?
Right now, it more closely resembles a situation in which keeping the core intact at the trade deadline will be simply untenable, barring a complete 180 over the coming weeks. The Islanders have hoped against hope that this group still could contend for a Stanley Cup, but right now, they are a bigger threat to win the draft lottery than a championship. Like it or not, that is an objective fact.
“We have to start winning hockey games if we want everybody to stay, right?” Bo Horvat said, articulating the situation staring the Islanders in the face 50 days from the trade deadline. “It’s on us at the end of the day to do what we can here on the ice and in the room to gather this team and push for a playoff spot.”
After dropping the opening game of this homestand Tuesday, coach Patrick Roy questioned his team’s hunger. After this one, when asked whether the Islanders had the necessary hunger for all 60 minutes, the head coach flatly replied, “No.”
“We need more consistency and that urgency from the start to the end,” Roy said after noting that he liked his team’s pushback in the third period. “We cannot have holes in our game.”
The Islanders came out with some initiative Thursday and appeared to grab hold of the game early when Max Tsyplakov laid out Ryan Poehling with a hard-but-legal hit that helped lead to the team’s first power-play goal in over a month.
But not only did they hand the initiative back during a flaming wreck of a second period, the Islanders’ hunger looked completely zapped as they gave up three straight goals, all of their own making.
Anthony Duclair’s blind pass from the wall to the middle of the ice coupled with poor play at the front of their own net allowed Sean Couturier to jam the puck in to tie the game at 1-all at the 5:15 mark.
Then, with the Isles on the power play, they gave their earlier special teams goal right back, allowing a shorthanded rush on which Noah Dobson failed to cover Garnet Hathaway for a 2-1 Flyers lead.
A few minutes later at even strength, the Islanders leaked another odd-man rush, this one after Adam Pelech was caught out of position, and Morgan Frost made it 3-1.
“I think we just didn’t manage the puck well,” Roy said. “You’re looking at all the chances we have, most of them came from turnovers. Either from the breakout or it’s at the blue line, and we gave them an odd-man rush. Can’t win in this league if you don’t do a better job, if you turn over the puck too many times.”
There were moments of fight in the third period — Mat Barzal’s goal 30 seconds into the frame and Anders Lee’s late power-play goal at six-on-four, both of which temporarily cut the lead to one. But the Islanders couldn’t hold on to the momentum on either occasion, with Ilya Sorokin out of position on Cam York’s goal five minutes after Barzal’s goal and Noah Cates scoring into an empty net just when it looked like the Isles might force overtime.
After winning three straight games out West, this seven-game homestand was the moment the Islanders had to cement themselves as contenders. Instead, they are doing the opposite.
“You always want to stay positive, but at the end of the day, we realize where we are in the standings,” Horvat said. “If we’re not winning games, we’re not gonna be climbing.”
This team can channel John Belushi in “Animal House” all it wants and say that nothing is over. But the Islanders are what their record says they are, and they are where the standings say they are.
Right now, they are 17-20-7, the 15th-best team in the 16-team Eastern Conference and nine points from the playoff cutline.
Right now, their playoff chances are dwindling toward zero in January, and after four years of hanging on to this core without a playoff series win, it sure looks like it’s time for the Islanders to face the consequences.
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