Islanders lacking in urgency in perturbing loss to Ducks

It might be time to worry about the Islanders.

It’s just nine games out of 82 and the narrative can change on a dime. But losing 3-1 on home ice Tuesday night to a struggling Anaheim team, with another night of noticeably low attendance and the Islanders looking tired even as they racked up a shot-count advantage is an alarm bell if there ever were one.

At 3-4-2, the Islanders are below NHL-.500 for the first time this season, the sort of numbers you would expect from, well, the Ducks.

Not from a team with aspirations to make the playoffs and perhaps do something once there.

“It sucks,” said a visibly frustrated Mathew Barzal, who was moved around the lineup on what felt like every shift from the second period onward and is still looking for his first five-on-five goal this season. “It sucks as a team. It just hasn’t gone our way. I know me and Bo [Horvat] put a lot on ourselves and haven’t found that spark to score a big goal and win a hockey game. Guys are feeling it a little bit.”

Though the Islanders ran up favorable advanced stats, that belied a lack of intensity and urgency that was evident as early as warm-ups — when multiple players stood still as statues during line rushes — and didn’t go away until far too late.

Whatever the Deserve-to-Win-O’Meter says, the Islanders looked flat and paid for it, with a pair of goals allowed on the penalty kill amplifying a four-on-five problem that has carried over from last season in full.

It took until 5:29 of the third, a few seconds after a long five-on-three had ended, for the Islanders to finally find some offense with Barzal converting a one-timer from the left circle.

That cut what had been a 2-0 deficit in half and gave the Islanders some badly needed momentum, but it couldn’t negate the game’s first 40 minutes.

The Islanders, from then on, had the kind of pressure that had been missing, but ran into a problem in the form of goalie Lukas Dostal who turned in an excellent 40-save night and helped the Ducks do what the Islanders rarely can: Hang onto a lead.

Frank Vatrano sealed it on an empty-net goal with just under a minute left.

“I always believe it’s just a matter of confidence,” coach Patrick Roy said. “When you’re confident, you shoot the puck and for some reason, it goes in. And right now, we have our chances but we just need to continue to get what I call those ugly ones with traffic in front until that confidence comes in.”

So, as much as the Islanders feel they deserved more, they are going on the road losers of two consecutive games.

Nobody can control for being without Anthony Duclair, but right now, one problem after another seems to be compounding on the Islanders.

Without Duclair, their top line is incomplete. And unlike last season, when Barzal and Horvat largely made up for that through their successful partnership, the dynamic duo has not gotten going, and ended up being a casualty of the line blender on Tuesday.

The fourth line, meanwhile, is a rotating cast, with six different combinations in the last six games and a seventh possibly coming Wednesday, with Roy having indicated pregame that Matt Martin would likely slot in against the Blue Jackets.

And then there is the penalty kill — which has picked up where it left off last season. That kept on going in the first period Tuesday when a failed clearing attempt led directly to Leo Carlsson’s tip-in to give the Ducks a 1-0 lead 14:06 into the night.

Troy Terry added a second power play goal for Anaheim at 14:07 of the second when he knocked in Mason McTavish’s cross-crease feed to make it 2-0.

“When you don’t put pucks in the net, you gotta bear down in those situations,” Roy said. “No doubt about it.”

This was a loss in which the Islanders controlled the shot count and controlled the puck for much of the night, which made it the sort of loss you could dismiss if those concerns did not exist prior to Tuesday.

Except they did. And all the training camp noise about getting off to a hot start and avoiding the late-season dramatics to secure a playoff spot now feels long gone.

“I think pressure’s good,” Horvat said. “We want pressure.”

But no one thought it would come so soon.