Laugh no longer at the Islanders, at least not first while the Devils are mentioned in the same breath. Losing so convincingly, comprehensively, humiliatingly to the NHL’s worst team at Nassau Coliseum yesterday surely puts coach John MacLean back on the hot seat should the Devils fall to the Flyers today in Newark.
Hallelujahs of relief poured from the Islanders after they ended their 14-game losing streak on Rick DiPietro’s 2-0 shutout of the Devils.
It wasn’t a party, but the Isles savored their first victory since Oct. 21.
“We haven’t been smiling for a month. I’m glad November is over,” said DiPietro, whose Islanders don’t return to action until the Rangers visit Thursday.
Down the hall, the Devils’ room was more like a morgue, with the vigil on as the axe looms again.
MacLean admitted he wonders if his 7-14-2 Devils ever will turn it around.
“Definitely, you do,” MacLean said. “You have to, with the record you’ve got.”
The Devils were looking for their first three-game winning streak of 2010, but didn’t look very hard. They were shut out for the fourth time in 11 November games, and scuttled any momentum they built from victories over Washington and Calgary.
“Too little, too late,” MacLean said. He added that becoming the Isles’ first victim in 15 games was embarrassing.
“It bothers me, just the way we lost. I’m not going to disparage the Islanders,” MacLean said. “It’s totally disappointing. You would think we have guys who have been through this before and would pick it up.”
Falling to the Islanders, whose losing streak ended one short of their franchise’s expansion-year record, put the Devils firmly in their class, one point above the Isles, having played one more game.
It has to hurt to lose to a team on the brink of matching a 28-year futility record.
“Of course it does,” Patrik Elias said.
The Devils fell behind early and stayed there for the Isles’ first shutout since Jan. 18, against, not coincidentally, the Devils.
Ilya Kovalchuk was 40 feet behind the play when Jesse Joensuu opened the scoring with a right-wing shot off a passing rush 1:32 into play. Rob Schremp gave the Isles their first two-goal lead of November at 5:15 of the second when he finished Blake Comeau’s pass through the crease from the left side, where Comeau had eluded Henrik Tallinder.
The Devils squandered four power plays, making them 1-for-43 on the road, while allowing one shorthander for a net zero on their away season. On a 5-on-3 in the third, a Kovalchuk slot shot, rejected routinely by DiPietro, was perhaps their best chance, and it wasn’t much.
“It shouldn’t be about them. It should be about us, building on two games to get a three-game winning streak,” Elias said. “We don’t take advantage of teams that aren’t playing so well.”
Actually, they’re the team not playing well that others exploit.