Capitals 4 (2EN), Islanders 1: Bad home cookin’

The New York Islanders’ seven-game homestand got evermore frustrating Sunday afternoon as they dropped their third in regulation and fourth loss overall through five tries.

Falling to the Capitals 4-1 (with two empty netters), the Islanders couldn’t convert their chances early, then couldn’t get a toehold late after Tom Not That Kind of Player Wilson spotted the Capitals a 2-0 lead with the help of a Ilya Sorokin puckhandling gaffe.

Like a few of the losses in this stretch, it wasn’t an awful performance, and in fact they felt they were doing a lot of the things that got them success out west, but the finish, the timely conversions and saves were not in their column.

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The Isles did get a power play goal but also conceded one, making special teams a wash. Bo Horvat pounced on a rebound to finally get the Isles back within one 6:17 to go in regulation.

But the Isles couldn’t get the next one with Sorokin pulled for a sixth attacker with over two minutes to go, enabling Aliaksei Protas and then Alex Ovechkin to ice the game with freebies.

True, they didn’t look quite like a team reeling from depth injuries with Kyle Palmieri, J-G Pageau and Alex Romanov out. But those absences will hurt at the margins in close games like this, with the Isles back to a makeshift fourth line just when they’d found a trio that was making some progress.

On that note, Marc Gatcomb was recalled from Bridgeport, though he didn’t get in the lineup today.

Roy, in his words:

“Sometimes after games there’s nothing to be said. And I think today is an example. We did everything right. We had a lot of shots and we had a lot of chances. We just came up short. We could find excuses. I get it. I mean, the standard of our team is to win hockey games and do the right thing, but sometimes we just need to continue to play the way we are and believe that things will go our way.”

So will things go their way again if they keep at it? After the road trip that solidified their approach, we discussed how things will go up and down but if they keep it up they’ll at least keep things interesting. I suspect that’s where we are now. The East looks to be a traffic jam of teams in the bottom playoff spots, wild cards and wild card chasers, and this 1-3-1 rut has the Isles still just a sneeze away from wild card position.

To sound like a broken record: this homestand only gets harder, with visits from two of the league’s very hottest teams in the Lightning and Avalanche, followed by one of those back-to-back Florida tours.