Sixty-five minutes. Eight shootout rounds. One goal.
That was the difference Monday night in San Jose, where the Islanders walked in as road favorites against a Sharks team that had dropped five straight, only to leave with an eight-round, scoreless 3-2 shootout loss. It was their fourth straight game without a win, and the result carried a different kind of sting because of how the night unfolded.
This wasn’t just another close loss. It looked like a team drifting away from the identity that had helped it early in the season.
At the start of the year, the Islanders were easy to define. They were organized, patient and disciplined in the middle of the ice.
They made smart puck decisions and forced opponents to work for every inch. Lately, that edge has slipped.
“We know what our really good game looks like. Just we haven’t been doing that these last five games for a full 60.
We’ve shown stretches of it. But again, we just need to be a lot better for 60 minutes.”
Bo Horvat repeated that point later, saying, “We know what our really good game looks like, Horvat added. “Just we haven’t been doing that these last five games for a full 60.
We’ve shown stretches of it. But again we just need to be a lot better for 60 minutes.”
The Islanders have now gone 0-2-2 during this stretch, and Monday’s loss stood out from the defeats to Edmonton, Carolina and New Jersey. The Sharks may be talented, but they are not one of the East’s established powers. Still, the Islanders spent too much of the game trapped in their own end, unable to establish a forecheck and too often giving up looks through the middle.
Ilya Sorokin kept them alive with 37 saves, and he gave them a real shot to escape with two points. But that was never supposed to be the plan. The system was built to limit the kind of chaos Sorokin would have to absorb.
Instead, the chaos is back.
DeBoer acknowledged the Islanders were better in stretches, but not nearly for long enough. The problems were familiar: too many mistakes of their own making, too much defending, too little sustained pressure.
It’s not a crisis. But it is a skid.
And right now, the bigger issue may not be the scoring. It’s that the Islanders have started to lose the shape of the team they were trying to be. The fastest way out may be less about creating more offense and more about getting back to the hockey that made them effective in the first place.
In Other News...
Matthew Schaefer Just Got A Contract Warning Islanders Fans Can't Ignore
Matthew Schaefers early NHL rise has already put him in the same conversation as some of the leagues most promising young stars, and Macklin Celebrini is the latest reminder of how quickly that market can move. The Islanders defenseman and the Sharks captain have crossed paths in limited head-to-head action, but their connection runs deeper than a few games, with both having worn Team Canada colors and spent time in the spotlight as franchise cornerstones before either had fully settled into an NHL routine.
Celebrinis recent extension only sharpens the focus on what comes next for Schaefer and the Islanders. For a player still building his resume, every strong stretch matters, because the numbers and the role are already pointing toward a major negotiation down the line. The bigger question now is how New York frames that next deal, and how much leverage Schaefers growing profile gives him when the time comes to turn promise into a long-term commitment. [Read more 🡒]
Barzal's Islanders Return Suddenly Feels Closer Than It Did
Mat Barzal is back around the Islanders again, and that alone is enough to make this California trip feel a little different. He joined the team on the road after being out recently because of inflammation connected to a previous knee injury, a sign that the club is at least moving closer to getting one of its most important players back in the mix.
The Islanders also brought Matias Maccelli and Ryan Pulock along on the trip while they deal with injuries, so this is not a clean bill of health by any stretch. Still, Barzals presence on the trip is the kind of encouraging development that can change the tone around a team, especially when it has spent so much time waiting for key pieces to return and for the lineup to look like itself again. [Read more 🡒]
Islanders Have A Real Opening To Climb The Metro Fast
The Islanders just came through a six-game run against playoff teams and came out of it at 2-3-1, which is hardly a disaster in a division race that still feels tight. More importantly, they did enough to keep themselves in striking distance, and the next few weeks could tell a lot about whether they can turn that into a real climb in the Metropolitan standings.
What makes the upcoming schedule so intriguing is the volume and variety, with 10 games in 19 days against a different set of opponents and only a limited number of chances to directly chip away at divisional rivals. For a team that has already shown it can hang in tough stretches, the timing matters, especially if some of the roster pieces that have been out can start filtering back in and give the Islanders a little more punch when the race tightens. [Read more 🡒]