The Islanders sit at 2-3 five games into the season with a mixed bag of performance after sandwiching a win over Chicago between losses to the Rangers and Lightning. Sean & Arthur break it down and look ahead at what comes next.
Good Morning, Islanders Country.
Note: Coming up later this morning we’ll publish a special feature from Chris Botta.
The Islanders got their first real test of the season Saturday night.
Yes, they lost the game, but the more interesting part was how they responded once the game started slipping away.
Tampa Bay jumped out to a 2-0 lead, then made it 3-1, and for a while it looked like the Islanders were about to find out there was still a pretty big gap between beating teams you should beat and hanging with one of the East’s established powers. Instead, they changed the game's entire feel.
Tony DeAngelo got them started. Matthew Schaefer pulled them closer. Brayden Schenn tied it on the power play with seven seconds left in the second period.
That, more than anything, was the most impressive thing the Islanders have done this season so far. They didn’t just make the score respectable.
They took a game that looked like it was slipping away and turned it into one they had a real chance to win.
The ending still hurt. Brandon Hagel scored with 1:44 remaining and completed his hat trick into an empty net 21 seconds later to give Tampa Bay a 5-3 win.
Pete DeBoer was right afterward when he said the Islanders “passed quite a few of the tests.”
They did.
They also learned the part that matters most against good teams: you can’t keep spotting them two goals and expect to survive. Still, for the first real measuring-stick game of the season, there was more to like than the final score suggests.
