And that is what you would call a hard landing.
Maybe the Islanders were due for a letdown game after winning six of seven on a road trip that crushed any reasonable expectation.
Still, a snoozer of a Saturday afternoon performance at UBS Arena that ended in a 2-1 defeat to a struggling Blues team was not the ideal return home the Islanders had envisioned.
Their hope had been that finishing the trip on Eastern Time would help the Islanders avoid the dead legs and tired game that usually comes when a team returns home after a long stretch on the road.
Go back to the drawing board on that theory.
If this was a video game, the Islanders’ internet connection would have been lagging.
They were a step behind in the defensive zone, their breakout passes were frequently too far ahead of the next guy.
The Blues, who had lost four in a row coming into Saturday, closed down whatever space the Islanders had in the offensive zone and forechecked with aplomb.
Jordan Binnington, who has struggled badly all year, was not tested nearly often enough as the Islanders were kept to the outside and could not find space to get clean shots off.
On top of that, the Islanders were badly beaten around both creases, most importantly resulting in Pius Suter’s goal at 17:51 of the second as the center boxed out Tony DeAngelo and cleaned up the garbage on Dylan Holloway’s rebound.
That made it 2-0 going into the final period, with Brayden Schenn’s goal off a two-on-one rush supplying the first St. Louis goal just 42 seconds into the game, and this was not an afternoon where the Islanders had much in their legs to generate a push.
It took until there was 3:20 left in the game for the Islanders to finally break through, with Anders Lee getting to a rebound from Kyle Palmieri.
For half a second, the Islanders thought they had the game-tying goal barely a minute later when Bo Horvat’s shot ended up in the back of the net, but it was instantly waved off as Kyle Palmieri interfered with Binnington.
Jonathan Drouin, though, did, draw a double minor high-stick on Justin Faulk that put the Islanders on the man advantage for the rest of regulation.
The Islanders, though, have struggled on the power play all year and could not get one past a locked-in Binnington to send it to overtime.
They did have much more possession in the final period, but the rush chances on which the Islanders thrive were few and far between; Binnington parried aside Anders Lee’s two-on-one look that was the best the Isles generated all game off the rush.
Off the cycle, the Islanders were too easily kept to the outside and too easily boxed out of the crease.
That, by the way, is enough of a recurring issue that you cannot hand-wave it the way you can do so for other elements of this specific performance.
Ilya Sorokin continued his strong run in nets, and was the biggest reason the score stayed close.
Otherwise, though, there wasn’t much good to say about the Islanders on an individual level.
None of the four lines distinguished themselves much.
Mathew Barzal’s trio with Drouin and Simon Holmstrom maintained possession well, but none of the three were willing enough to shoot the puck, so it went for naught.
The fourth line, which had provided needed energy in Detroit on Thursday, petered out early in the game, with Casey Cizikas getting cut out of the rotation in the second period.
It’s hard to know what the Islanders, now 12-8-2, should take from this one — it is easy to shrug off as the first game back home after a grueling trip, but against a team no one should be happy to drop two points at home against.
With six more home games coming, including Sunday against the Kraken, there at least won’t be much time to dwell on it.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
