So where is the line between confidence and delusion, between belief and arrogance?
Because on Thursday night in the home locker room at the Coliseum, Kevin Poulin stood there in all sincerity, shaking a protein shake, taking little to no blame for the team’s third-period collapse that resulted in a brutal 3-2 loss to the Kings.
“A hockey game is 60 minutes, not 40 minutes, not 20 minutes,” said Poulin, whose Islanders team went into the third up 2-0. “We just had to play the third, and I think they won the battle. Maybe too many mistakes as well.”
So, Poulin, as the 23-year-old netminder making his third consecutive start, now with a grand total of 34 career NHL games, attempting to usurp the No. 1 goalie position from incumbent Evgeni Nabokov, would you have wanted any of those goals back? Say, the first one, 5:34 into the third period, when Kings defenseman Slava Voynov took a slap shot from practically on top of the goal line extended, 5 feet away, and it beat you inside the near post?
“Just a lucky goal,” Poulin said. “Slap shot from there, just snuck in. It bounced a little bit off the post, and just in.”
Now the real kicker.
“It’s a nice goal,” Poulin said. “He’s 5 feet away with a slap shot. It’s going to happen.”
Since Day One, coach Jack Capuano has embraced Poulin’s attitude, saying before the game, “He has a little bit of swagger and attitude about him, and I think you have to have that when you’re the last line of defense.”
After the game, after Casey Cizikas got his first goal of the season and rookie defenseman Aaron Ness got the first of his career, both in the second period to stake his team to a 2-0 lead, Capuano was hesitant to evaluate the goaltending in depth.
“[Poulin] played well enough to win,” Capuano said.
That surely looked to be the case when Poulin opened the third period with two huge saves — the first on a Mike Richards breakaway less than a minute into the period, followed 30 seconds later on a wide-open Jake Muzzin wrist shot from the slot.
Yet after Voynov’s goal early in the third, the Kings (12-6-1) started pushing, and it didn’t help when the Islanders (7-10-3) had forward Colin McDonald take an illegal-check-to-the-head penalty on Trevor Lewis midway through.
“I’m not looking for that, I know the situation of the game,” McDonald said. “I knew he was leaned over trying to make a play, and it’s hard to hold up at that point.”
On the ensuing power play, it was rookie Tanner Pearson who pushed the puck like a curling stone across the ice and through Poulin’s legs, where it bounced from pad to pad before inching over the goal line. The play was reviewed, but it was clear Pearson notched his first NHL goal in his league debut, tying it 2-2.
Then, with just 1:27 remaining, Muzzin fired a low snap shot that deflected off of Tyler Toffoli’s stick, through Thomas Hickey’s legs, and over Poulin’s shoulder.
Maybe that one Poulin couldn’t have stopped. Maybe at that point it was too late.
More importantly, Capuano stated he had zero inkling whom he was going to start in net at home on Saturday against the Red Wings. Or, for that matter, any game going forward.
“The emotions run high after a game like this,” Capuano said. “As a coaching staff and the guys as well, we’ll sit back and give some thoughts on the lineup.”