The Islanders haven’t won much this season, but they’ve been competitive in most games – something they have used as a positive during a long campaign.
Last night, however, was not one of those games.
“It’s not acceptable to perform like that,” Mark Streit said after the Isles were blasted by Carolina, 6-2, at Nassau Coliseum. “I don’t really care that we haven’t had a bad game like that in a long time. We’ve lost a lot and that’s all that matters.”
In their worst effort since being pummeled in Pittsburgh, 9-2, on Dec. 11, the Isles surrendered three goals in the first period and were badly outplayed from start to finish.
Coach Scott Gordon wasn’t ready to lambaste his team following the game, despite the fact that the Isles have now lost four of its last five.
“It was a poor game and we haven’t had one of those in a while,” Gordon said. “We’re not the only team to have a bad night. And given where we are in the standings, you might expect that to happen more often and it hasn’t.”
Well, perhaps that’s something.
It was an ugly night all the way around; the Isles announced that Richard Park, who had played in 221 straight games, would be out for four weeks with broken ribs suffered in Wednesday’s loss to the Rangers.
And after Streit tied the game at 1-1 with a power-play goal 11:48 into the first, the Isles surrendered five straight goals to the playoff-hopeful Hurricanes – who had been drilled in three of their previous four matches.
Eric Staal scored two of those goals as the Isles looked much worse than they had the previous night in the 3-1 loss at the Garden – as well as in any other game since the early part of the season.
“The result speaks for itself,” Streit said. “It was a very bad game on our part. The opposite of (Wednesday) night.”
The Isles did get Trent Hunter back from a strained hip flexor that kept him out of four in a row to take Park’s place, but Gordon said the Isles missed the injured forward’s “versatility.”
The Islanders can ill afford to lose that, given their lack of depth and experience, but that was far from their only problem in the lopsided loss.
“We were sloppy,” Gordon said.
Now he has to hope that despite where the Islanders are in the standings, he doesn’t see many more games like this one.
Hurricanes 6 Islanders 2