The Islanders failed to learn from their past playoff experience against the Hurricanes, falling into the same trap with a lead in the third period.
The Islanders failed to learn from their past playoff experience against the Hurricanes, falling into the same trap with a lead in the third period.
RALEIGH -- The date was April 28, 2023.
The New York Islanders, with their playoff lives on the line, found themselves up 1-0 after two periods of play at UBS Arena.
Backs against the wall, down three games to two to the Carolina Hurricanes, only one thing stood in the Islanders' way from forcing a Game Seven back in Raleigh: Twenty minutes.
Through the opening 40, the Islanders were the better team, with Lane Lambert's squad outshooting Rod Brind'Amour's team 28-19.
Then came the third period.
Albeit a push from the Hurricanes to start the period, the Islanders decided to sit back and try to play the shell game.
They got shelled instead, being outshot 19-5, allowing Sebastian Aho's game-tying goal at 9:24 of the third, leading to overtime.
Their season ended at the six-minute mark of the extra frame when Paul Stastny snuck one in past Ilya Sorokin from a tough angle.
UBS was silent, and so was the room, stunned by what had transpired in Elmont.
Although no one knows what would have happened had the Islanders been more aggressive in the third period, the feeling was that if the Islanders had scored that second goal, a 2-0 lead, they likely would have been able to hold down the fort.
"Certainly felt like we could have been more on our toes. I didn't think we established our forecheck in the third period," Islanders head coach Lane Lambert said. "So, as a result, we were on our heels more than we needed to be. There's no question about that."
Mathew Barzal had this to say:
"Yeah, sometimes when you're just trying to hold on, it doesn't work well. I think the first few periods were playing aggressive, and in the third period, we kind of sat back and just wanted to kind of clog it up and make it hard, and sometimes when you do that, it goes the other way."
The Islanders had a long summer to think about that Game Six against the Carolina Hurricanes, learn from their failures in that series, which ended four games to two, and turn the page with a clean slate.
Who knew that 12 months later, they'd find themselves in exactly the same situation, ultimately doing the exact same thing?
After dropping Game One to the Hurricanes 3-1 to kick off their 2024 Stanley Cup Playoffs, the Islanders spoke about the importance of cleaning out their breakout and how they needed to continue to forecheck if they wanted to slow down the Hurricanes transition game.
But, when the puck dropped for Game Two, it was all Hurricanes.
Somehow, and some way, the Islanders took a commanding 3-0 lead, entering the third period up 3-1 despite being outshot 22-11.
All that stood in their way from tying the series and heading home was, you guessed it, 20 minutes.
Early on in the third, the Islanders went with the dump-and-chase method, as they should've, but once they failed to establish their forecheck, the Hurricanes got right back to their game and never let up.
As we saw in Game Six in 2023, the Islanders went into a 1-2-2 trap, which meant New York had one forward forechecking, two pressing in the neutral zone, and two defenders at their blue line.
That system was ineffective at holding off the surge without garnering possession or even getting the puck out into the neutral zone.
The Islanders sat back, and like a re-run of their elimination game, they coughed up the lead.
First, it was Seth Jarvis, cutting the Canes' deficit to 3-1 at 10:43 of the third.
Then, in a span of nine seconds, Sebastian Aho tied the game on a Bo Horvat missed coverage at the glove-side post before a Jordan Martinook bank shot off of Semyon Varlamov's left skate on a wraparound try, with the veteran goalie looking the wrong way:
Like last season, the Islanders didn't just decide to sit back before the third period started.
But exactly the same thing happened.
It's more understandable, up 1-0, that New York would sit back and trust their defensive system.
But, up 3-1, the Islanders knew that playing the "sit-back" game was something that hadn't worked in the past.
"They play tight. They play. They play up in your face," Brock Nelson said postgame.
"We got to have a pushback, and obviously, we weren't good enough tonight. We'll learn from it and get better," Noah Dobson said.
Of course, learning is important and the only way to move forward, but actions speak louder than words, and New York should have known the dangerous game they were playing in the third.
Risky, for sure, but the Islanders should have taken more chances offensively.
"Do you watch football?' Roy asked another member of the media a week after taking the job. "You're leading by 14 points in the fourth quarter. You're halfway into the fourth quarter. What does the team do? They run the ball. So, how can we run the ball in hockey?
"Offensively, if we hang on to the puck, that's what I call learning how to win hockey games. We learn to hold onto the puck, make plays, kill the clock, and that's what you do."
Roy was right and tried to instill that mindset onto his new team, which, at times, did play that way in the regular season, scarcely -- just not when it mattered most.
The Islanders are a faster team than they were last year. They're a more talented team than they were a year ago in these playoffs because Mathew Barzal is fully healthy, Alexander Romanov is fully healthy, and all four forward lines have some element of speed, whether it's Barzal, Horvat, Simon Holmstrom, Pierre Engvall, and Kyle MacLean.
On the backend, Dobson can move along with Mike Reilly.
All it could have taken was one of those players listed above to skate the puck out and either get the puck deep or garner some offensive zone time to kill minutes off the clock and push back, as Dobson mentioned.
The Islanders' loss in Game Two is incredibly unfortunate, as this was a series in which no one believed they could accomplish anything.
Despite that, they had the chance to steal Game One, playing the best they possibly could, and had the chance to come away victorious if they just capitalized.
That was the talking point after that one.
Even nowhere close to their best in Game Two, they did what they didn't, capitalizing on their few chances.
They just had to lock it down, which was their biggest weakness during the regular season.
They blew 24 third-period leads in 82 games, their 25th of the season coming Monday night.
It's hard to blame head coach Patrick Roy, who you could hear screaming from the bench to be aggressive at times in the third, but there's blame to go around.
This team's DNA is to sit back, and it seems impossible for this group to overcome that issue.
Islanders general manager Lou Lamoriello believed in this team last season, and he believed in this team this season, making no changes at the 2024 NHL Trade Deadline.
The truth is, one trade deadline acquisition wasn't fixing their defensive zone failed clears, or the entire team sitting back when they needed to push forward.
Now, the Islanders head back to Long Island, staring down a 2-0 series deficit, wondering how to bounce back from their Monday nightmare in Raleigh.