The regular-season marathon that extends this year to 84 games calls for a whole lot of otherwise forgettable nights when anything less than consistently taking care of business can get teams in trouble come crunch time.
Thursday at UBS Arena was one of them, and so credit the Islanders for a straightforward and businesslike 4-1 win over the Connor Bedard-less Blackhawks in which Alexander Romanov’s absence was blunted by a clean defensive effort.
The revamped pairs, with Logan Stanley to Matthew Schaefer’s left, Scott Mayfield inserted into the lineup on Tony DeAngelo’s right and the Adam Pelech-Ryan Pulock duo reunited for the first time since last November, put in a good night of work against a Chicago side that is now 1-4-0 as its long rebuild trudges on. It wasn’t the most entertaining 60 minutes, but in lieu of high-event hockey it was the second win of two for Ilya Sorokin in which the netminder could credit his defense without it feeling forced.
At this early stage of the year, the Islanders look like a team whose ability to prevent goals or not will be its defining factor on most nights. There have been stretches of every game so far when the breakouts aren’t going and two or more forward lines have looked disconnected. When the Islanders can make those minutes just as frustrating for the opposition as for themselves, they’re in good shape.
That’s what they did to the Blackhawks for much of Thursday. Stanley and Mayfield, the two players whom the Islanders are asking much more of than mere days ago, played steady defensive hockey. DeAngelo, playing his off side for the first time as an Islander, adapted just fine. And once a flurry of goals came in the second period, the Islanders looked safe in the lead.
Bo Horvat put the Islanders on the board with a power-play goal in the last minute of the first, but it was Adam Pelech, turning over Oliver Moore at the defensive blue line, who started the game’s decisive sequence.
Emil Heineman, the trailer on the Islanders’ ensuing rush, buried one past Arvid Soderblom to double the lead. Another quick breakout sequence, in the form of Schaefer’s chip off the wall to Anthony Duclair, led to their third less than three minutes later after Stanley’s no-look pass found Duclair below the right circle.
Just 22 seconds before the night’s halfway mark, that made it 3-0, and while the Blackhawks might have stopped the rest of it from becoming academic — 3-0 with 30 minutes to go hardly spells game over — that was not within the visitor’s remit. By the time Frank Nazar’s blast broke Sorokin’s shutout at six-on-five, there was just 2:32 to go, rendering it too little and too late.
The closest thing to a snag came from Nazar a minute later on a play that ended in Horvat’s empty-net goal, as the winger drove his shoulder into Horvat’s head as the puck was released, prompting a scrum that ended with multiple major penalties.
This was no tougher than it needed to be, and you would have to stretch back to before the current building was open to find an Islanders team that didn’t trend towards the opposite.
There will be tougher nights against tougher opponents, more equipped to take advantage of the speed deficit on the Islanders blue line that is exacerbated without Romanov. Even Thursday, there were signs of that, particularly in the third period when Sorokin was forced into action more often.
This is not a team that can afford to be loose with the puck, or that can play run-and-gun hockey, particularly as long as Mathew Barzal is out. (That situation did take a positive turn Thursday morning, when Barzal skated on his own.) It needs its defense. It needs its goaltending.
Two wins in four does not make a trend, but it is at least a positive sign that both the Islanders’ victories have come without headaches or histrionics.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: nypost.com
