BUFFALO — All of a week ago, the Islanders spent a few hours atop the Eastern Conference.
Now they are limping toward the NHL’s holiday break, and after Saturday had to watch other results to see whether they would remain above the playoff cutline.
Aside from the variations of a tight standings picture before Christmas, which can flip one way or the other quickly, there is the more alarming fact that the Islanders didn’t look much better on Saturday than they did on Friday.
Ryan Pulock called this game against the Sabres the most important of the season so far.
Coach Patrick Roy shook up the lineup and the forward lines alike.
It all had little effect.
The Islanders completed a gruesome back-to-back with a 3-2 shootout loss to Buffalo at the KeyBank Center on Josh Norris’ winner, and their third straight loss tied a season high.
This has been the first time all year that, for extended periods of time, the Islanders have lapsed into looking old and slow.
They made all the right noises on Friday about trying to simplify their game: dump pucks in, put shots on net, go north.
The defensemen were eager to shoot, but there was still a reluctance to put pucks deep and grind out chances, along with the same struggles to make tape-to-tape passes that have beset the Islanders lately.
Not only have the breakouts been poor, but the neutral-zone stinginess on the defensive side fell apart on Saturday. Again and again, the Sabres got behind defensemen, with Ryan Pulock in particular having one of his worst nights of the year.
Matthew Schaefer, who has sparked the Islanders so many times this year, didn’t get enough puck touches to impact the game in his usual manner either.
Even with that, the Islanders came into the third period with a chance to erase a two-goal deficit after Mathew Barzal lifted his own rebound past Alex Lyon to make it 2-1 with 23 seconds to go in the second period.
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The third-period push they needed, though, didn’t materialize until late.
The Islanders committed two penalties in the period’s first 10 minutes, handicapping their ability to generate anything offensively, and the same problems that plagued them for the first two periods didn’t go away.
With 1:27 to go, they were handed a golden opportunity when Michael Kesselring slashed Anders Lee’s stick, allowing the Islanders to skate the rest of regulation at six-on-four.
Emil Heineman’s one-timer from Barzal’s cross-crease feed was the look the Islanders needed, and the Swede tied the game at two.
That got the Islanders a point, and they can hang their hats on the resiliency they showed to stick with this one.
They couldn’t complete the comeback, though, as Lyon followed a standout performance in overtime by besting David Rittich in the skills competition.
On the ice from Long Island
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Rasmus Dahlin scored on the power play just 1:47 into the game, cutting through Jean-Gabriel Pageau, Heineman and Pulock before finishing beautifully on his backhand, with Lyon picking up the primary assist.
Tage Thompson extended Buffalo’s lead 8:55 into the second, with Pulock behind the play on the rush again as the Sabres’ big man got Rittich to bite on a fake before tucking the puck behind the netminder at the right post.
In between, the Islanders looked disorganized and disconnected, struggling to get through the neutral zone and to stop Buffalo from doing the same.
The best news for the Islanders is the calendar. They have just one game between now and next Saturday, at home against New Jersey on Tuesday. The break can’t come soon enough.
