WASHINGTON — The lethargic effort by the Islanders on Saturday night prompted a drastic change in their forward lines for Monday’s 4-1 loss against the Capitals.
Not only was Mathew Barzal shifted back to the wing and reunited with Bo Horvat for just the fourth time this season, but the second line featured Jonathan Drouin starting at center for the first time all year.
Drouin skated between Emil Heineman and Simon Holmstrom, another combination the Islanders had never deployed together.
The only forward line that stayed untouched was the fourth line of Kyle MacLean, Casey Cizikas and Marc Gatcomb.
Anthony Duclair moved down to the third line with Anders Lee and Jean-Gabriel Pageau, while Ondrej Palat skated with Barzal and Horvat.
“I was pretty happy the way things went with the Horvat line [and] Drouin line,” Roy said after the game. “Even the Pageau and Cizikas [lines]. I thought we did a lot of good things, but unfortunately maybe not enough offensively to score more than one goal.”
The Islanders have been keeping the idea of Drouin playing in the middle in their back pockets for a while, having occasionally skated with him there when others missed practices.
Drouin has also frequently taken faceoffs, and took a 50.9 percent rate at the dots into Monday, when he went 4-for-11 on faceoffs.
Trying Heineman and Holmstrom, two Swedes who are close off the ice, together, could also help to spark Heineman, who has hit a bit of a wall lately.
“I like playing center,” Drouin, who has occasionally played the position in both the NHL and in juniors, said pregame. “You’re more free a little bit up the ice, you’re not stuck on the wall as a winger watching your defensemen. More free, a little more instinct.”
The revamped power-play units, with Matthew Schaefer, Barzal, Horvat, Holmstrom and Palat together on the top unit, produced an 0-for-2 night.
David Rittich stopped 20 of 23 shots in nets on the front end of the back-to-back, with Ilya Sorokin scheduled to play Tuesday against the Penguins at UBS Arena.
Roy said goalie coach Sergei Naumovs made the decision.
“That was a tough one because Ilya was so good here in Washington at the beginning of the season,” Roy said. “Probably one of his better games. They’re both good teams, Washington and Pittsburgh. Sometimes you just go with what the goalie coach’s feeling is.”
Scott Mayfield fought Tom Wilson 1:47 into the third after Wilson hit Holmstrom near center ice.
Though the hit was legal, Mayfield called it “a little awkward, kind of high.”
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
