COLUMBUS, Ohio — At least the Islanders went down swinging.
Mat Barzal’s ejection Sunday for using his stick like a baseball bat and taking a hack at Mason Marchment, though, might have ramifications beyond his team’s eventual late collapse and 4-2 loss to the Blue Jackets on Kirill Marchenko’s game-winner.
It would be no surprise if Barzal was hit with a suspension for Tuesday’s game in Chicago, and the Islanders sorely missed No. 13 for the final 38 minutes of Sunday’s loss, too.
Without him, they took a lead, blew the lead and blew two points against a division rival.
There wasn’t much energy in the building and both teams looked disconnected for stretches Sunday. You did not need a well-trained eye to tell that the Islanders had played less than 24 hours prior, and you could have been fooled into thinking the Blue Jackets had, too.
Both teams committed a heap of penalties, but none more notable than Barzal seeing red 1:37 into the second period after Marchment, for the second time, took liberties with rookie Matthew Schaefer.
Marchment had been called for roughing on a late hit on Schaefer in the first period, and stuck his knee out to trip him in the second. Ryan Pulock exchanged words with the Columbus winger, but Barzal decided to take things into his own hands, winding up and swinging his stick across Marchment’s legs.
He was immediately hit with a game misconduct and five-minute slashing major which, in a game that was tied at 1-1 at the time, could have been a killer for the Islanders.
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Not only did they kill off the major with some help from the Blue Jackets and Marchment, whose own penalties negated about four of the five minutes. But by the end of the second, the Islanders had taken a 2-1 lead on Bo Horvat’s goal off the rush, his first since returning from a lower-body injury Saturday.
That put the Islanders into a similar position as 24 hours prior, defending a one-goal lead against an increasingly desperate opponent.
This time, they bent and finally broke with 4:33 to go in regulation after Ivan Provorov’s shot from above the slot was deflected in by an Islanders stick on the way, tying the game at 2-2.
The goal had been coming for some time, with the Islanders unable to exit their zone for more than a few seconds at a time and failing to clear out the blue paint around David Rittich’s net as well as they had 24 hours prior.
Before the Islanders could so much as reset, Marchenko gave Columbus a 3-2 lead off the rush with a backhand that beat Rittich just 74 seconds after Provorov’s goal.
Cole Sillinger sealed a game the Islanders had led mere minutes before with an empty-net goal.
On the ice from Long Island
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Marchenko opened the scoring for Columbus on the rush, beating Rittich — who started for the second consecutive day — glove side 8:09 into the match. Max Shabanov answered for the Islanders at 17:16 of the first, knocking in Jean-Gabriel Pageau’s shot that caromed off Columbus netminder Jet Greaves.
It was the first of multiple goals that Greaves, who was off his angle on Horvat’s mark, would have wanted back.
The Islanders healthy scratched Cal Ritchie as part of what seems to be becoming a rotation on the third line, putting Anthony Duclair back into the lineup after the latter sat in Saturday’s victory over the Rangers.
Though the lines were necessarily jumbled after Barzal’s ejection, the fourth line largely stayed together and had a typically pesky, effective night. Schaefer was nonplussed by Marchment’s provocations and far more noticeable offensively than against the Rangers. Tony DeAngelo and Max Shabanov are starting to stack good games on top of one another.
The defensive posture the Islanders fell into in the third, though, cost them.
They survived that against the Rangers, but did not have the same ability here.
