When the cliché is trotted out — “We did a lot of good things out there” — after a game like Friday’s, you understand where the Islanders are coming from.
They had plenty of possession, plenty of chances.
The penalty kill was excellent.
The top six started to roll after Mat Barzal and Bo Horvat were reunited midway through the second period and the 3-2 final tally in the loss certainly gave a better picture of the game than the 3-0 lead the Kings held earlier on.
Really, Los Angeles did not even look like the better team for most of the night.
So sure, the cliché has some merit.
The Islanders went into the third period down 3-1, but with momentum decidedly on their side having dominated the 10 minutes leading into intermission, with Emil Heineman scoring and Anders Lee having a few close calls.
Given that, and given the Islanders’ proclivity for the dramatic, it hardly counted as a surprise that Heineman scored for a second time just 3:38 into the second period, this time tipping in Matthew Schaefer’s shot to make cut it to 3-2.
The Islanders proceeded to play some of their best offensive-zone hockey of the year.
Shift after shift they were up ice, pinching down the walls, holding the puck in, wearing out the Kings.
Heineman nearly completed the hat trick with a third deflection that went off the bar.
It looked like a matter of time before the Islanders would tie the game.
And then the time ran out, with the score still frozen at 3-2 and the Islanders feeling like they deserved more.
Back to that cliché, though.
Get down in the weeds deeper than that and — as well as the Islanders finished this game — there are a few problems with it.
First and foremost, it is way too late in the season to be taking losses lightly, even with the understanding that the Islanders are not going to win out.
They came into the night hoping to pass the Penguins for second in the Metro; they exit it hoping that by the end of Saturday — when the Blue Jackets face the Flyers and the Islanders play the Flames — Columbus has not pulled ahead of the Islanders on the tiebreaker.
Indeed, there is a scenario where the Islanders wake up Sunday morning outside the playoff picture for the first time since Dec. 4.
That would be the ultimate smack to a team for whom the postseason has taken on an inevitable feel even while in reality the Blue Jackets have rapidly gained ground over the last couple of weeks.
One loss isn’t the end of the world, but more urgency is warranted, and it certainly was Friday.
Second, there is the inconvenient fact that the Islanders did not do much with all the puck possession they had, mainly because they struggled so badly to get any shots through to Darcy Kuemper.
After 20 minutes Friday, just three of 22 Islanders attempts had hit the net.
The percentage got better from there — how couldn’t it have? — but there were too many missed nets and too many blocked shots, mainly off point shots where more precise decision-making was required from the Islanders’ blue-liners.
One of them, from Scott Mayfield, led straight to the Kings’ opening goal when Trevor Moore blocked a shot and came in unimpeded on a breakaway to score.
The two other goals the Kings scored in the first — one from Anze Kopitar off a rebound and the other from Adrian Kempe off the rush — did not come in that fashion, but Kempe’s goal, at least, came on the heels of an offensive-zone shift in which the Islanders just could not get a shot through.
There were good things Friday, sure.
But not enough of them for two points, and that is all that matters here.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
