And that is what is called a hard landing.
Maybe the Islanders were due for a letdown game after winning six of seven on a road trip that crushed any reasonable expectation.
Still, a snoozer of a Saturday afternoon performance at UBS Arena that ended in a 2-1 defeat to a struggling Blues team was not the ideal return home the Islanders had envisioned.
Their hope had been that finishing the trip on Eastern Time would help the Islanders avoid the dead legs and tired game that usually comes when a team returns home after a long stretch on the road.
Go back to the drawing board with that theory.
“We need to keep living in the present time,” Jean-Gabriel Pageau told The Post. “We know we had a good road trip. Now, we have a home stand. We want to do well here, too.”
If this was a video game, the Islanders’ internet connection would have been lagging.
They were a step behind in the defensive zone, their breakout passes were frequently too far ahead of the next guy.
The Blues, who had lost four in a row coming into Saturday, closed down whatever space the Islanders had in the offensive zone and forechecked with aplomb.
Jordan Binnington, who has struggled badly all year, was not tested nearly often enough as the Islanders were kept to the outside and could not find space to get off clean shots.
On top of that, the Islanders were badly beaten around both creases, most importantly resulting in Pius Suter’s goal at 17:51 of the second as the center boxed out Tony DeAngelo and cleaned up the garbage on Dylan Holloway’s rebound.
That made it 2-0 going into the final period, with Brayden Schenn’s goal off a two-on-one rush supplying the first St. Louis goal just 42 seconds into the game, and this was not an afternoon where the Islanders had much in their legs to generate a push.
On the ice from Long Island
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“I felt like we were a little flat at times today,” Ryan Pulock said. “I know tomorrow we’ll be better there. I think we did a pretty good job to give ourselves a chance.”
It took until there was 3:20 left in the game for the Islanders to finally break through, with Anders Lee cleaning up Kyle Palmieri’s rebound.
For half a second, the Islanders thought they had the game-tying goal barely a minute later when Bo Horvat’s shot ended up in the back of the net, but it was instantly waved off as Palmieri interfered with Binnington.
Jonathan Drouin, though, did, draw a double minor high-stick on Justin Faulk that put the Islanders on the man advantage for the rest of regulation.
With a six-on-four power play incoming after the Islanders pulled goalie Ilya Sorokin, coach Patrick Roy declined to challenge the no-goal call, believing the Islanders would lose.
The Islanders, though, have struggled on the power play all year and could not get one past a locked-in Binnington to send it to overtime.
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“That [save] on Bo, he had one on [Max Shabanov] right before that,” Lee said. “Those are two inches up or down and we’re talking differently. You gotta give him credit for that, for getting across the crease there.”
They did have much more possession in the final period, but the rush chances on which the Islanders thrive were few and far between; Binnington parried aside Lee’s two-on-one look that was the best the Isles generated all game off the rush and made a terrific save on Shabanov’s one-timer late in the third.
Off the cycle, the Islanders were too easily kept to the outside and too easily boxed out of the crease.
That, by the way, is enough of a recurring issue that you cannot hand-wave it the way you can do so for other elements of this specific performance.
“I thought we had a few good shots that [Binnington] didn’t see, but just didn’t hit the net,” Roy said. “They did a good job being in those lanes and not allowing us to get through. They played a good game.”
