Maybe this was payback from the hockey gods for Tuesday night, when the Islanders were nowhere near good enough in beating the Blackhawks.
Or maybe the Islanders just need to take a good, hard look at things right now, given it’s been three weeks since they scored three or more goals in a game.
On Thursday, they coughed up a hat trick to Dylan Guenther, looked brutal on the power play and couldn’t sustain momentum at five-on-five in an embarrassing 7-2 loss to the Mammoth.
Way more concerning than their abysmal on-ice performance, though, was the sight of Bo Horvat going up the tunnel with an apparent lower-body injury during the third period, barely 24 hours after being named to Team Canada’s Olympic roster.
They came into the third period still very much in the game, down 3-1 with 1:26 left on a four-minute man advantage from Alexander Kerfoot high-sticking Cal Ritchie, who had scored the lone Islander goal.
Not only did they fail to generate a shot on the power play, but at 2:52 of the period, they’d given up a power-play goal when Mikhail Sergachev’s shot from above the slot beat David Rittich clean from above the slot.
Rittich was caught out of position a few minutes later on another power-play goal, this one from Clayton Keller, who had an open net as the netminder didn’t even try to recover from the opposite post.
Rittich was subsequently pulled and took a brief trip down the tunnel as Marcus Hogberg relieved him. The Swede, in his first appearance of the year, was no better, letting in a pair of easy goals that only served to validate the way the Islanders have ridden Rittich with Ilya Sorokin out injured.
As has been the case lately, the Islanders’ game was filled with errors and missed opportunities.
Tony DeAngelo was caught behind the play on Dylan Guenther’s opening goal off the rush 36 seconds into the second, then turned the puck over leading to Nick Schmaltz’s 3-1 goal on the ensuing rush later in the period.
There was Jean-Gabriel Pageau — on ice for three goals against — failing to get to a puck in the corner and watching as Lawson Crouse fed Guenther for Utah’s second goal, too.
Most glaringly, there were five power play attempts through which the Islanders not only didn’t score until far too late in the game, when Matthew Schaefer got one to go with his team down 5-1. The defensive lapses, at least, can be called anomalies. The power play cannot, with the Islanders just 3-for-23 dating back to Dec. 16.
Rittich has done an admirable job filling in for Sorokin, but the backup goaltender seemed to hit a breaking point on Thursday in his sixth straight start, stopping just nine of 14 shots and being completely caught out on the last two Utah goals.
Ironically, there were stretches in this one where the Islanders controlled the run of play — they held Utah without a five-on-five shot in the first period — and the changes Patrick Roy made to the lines, such as splitting up Mat Barzal and Horvat, mostly had the intended effect.
Jonathan Drouin, though, has been stapled to a top-six and top-unit power play role all season and does not have a goal since Nov. 14. DeAngelo had one of his roughest games of the year, Pageau looked out of place on the wing and the third line was, at best, up and down.
The Isles have treaded water despite their offensive struggles for a while now.
On Thursday, though, they sunk.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
