The early portion of the schedule in which the Islanders will spend a lot of time on the road does them few favors.
But a short two-game homestand this week appears to be an opportunity.
A pair of struggling teams — the Canadiens on Saturday and the Red Wings on Tuesday — will come through UBS Arena, marking an opportunity for the Islanders to bank some points after going NHL-.500 (1-1-2) through their first four games, three of which were on the road.
Montreal has won just two of its first five games and is coming off a 4-1 defeat against the Kings that left coach Martin St. Louis promising local media he would be “proactive” and captain Nick Suzuki lamenting the team’s “immature effort.”
On top of that, the Canadiens are dealing with injuries to defensemen Kaiden Guhle and Mike Matheson along with former No.1 pick Juraj Slafkovsky.
Guhle did not make the trip to New York. Matheson and Slafkovsky did, so they could be options Saturday.
The Red Wings, meanwhile, are an abysmal 1-3-0 and were dismantled by the Rangers at home Thursday night by a 5-2 score, with their defense and goaltending looking suspect and management having called up young center Marco Kasper to try to spark some energy into the group.
In other words, these are two teams looking for a get-right game — and it is incumbent on the Islanders to refuse it to them.
That is a spot in which the Islanders have regularly struggled over the past couple of seasons, and one in which they can ill afford to do so again.
On the ice from Long Island
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The team came out of its three-game road trip liking what it was seeing, but the results lagged behind and a 1-0 overtime defeat in St. Louis — a second shutout in three games — left a bad taste.
Still, there was enough good that Patrick Roy said following the loss that taking three points out of six against three potential playoff teams was OK, albeit not satisfying.
“There’s a lot of positive,” Jean-Gabriel Pageau said after the Blues game. “When you even look at tonight, we have chances. I think you start to worry when you don’t have any chances and you don’t score goals. We had a couple [potential] goals, couple open nets. Could have been a different result tonight again.
“We won a game [in Colorado], got a point tonight. Of course we’re always hungry for more, we’re not satisfied, but not a bad trip at the end of the day. We picked up points.”
That sentiment is fine for now.
It will be hard to keep things positive if the results don’t start coming.
