The Islanders’ Ferrari broke down on the start line and returned to the garage. Now, their season is on the brink.
Turning to Ilya Sorokin might have been a necessary risk for Patrick Roy to take with his team trailing 2-0 in the series, but the move backfired almost immediately as a shaky Sorokin let in three goals on 14 shots and got a second-period hook, setting the Islanders up for a 3-2 Game 3 loss to the Hurricanes on Thursday night.
Miracles do happen. But barring something totally unforeseen, the season is all over but the shouting — of which there might be a whole lot directed at an organization that is on the brink of losing a third straight year to inertia.
In front of Semyon Varlamov, the Islanders fought back to make it a game. These Islanders have always done just enough to make it hurt.
“Our fans were in it. We were playing good,” Roy said. “It sucks to say that, but I thought we played a good game.”
The ice was a little more open at UBS Arena than it had been in Raleigh, N.C., a dynamic that fit a home side that finally saw its top six show up, with the second line getting going, and which badly needed to find ways to break the puck out clean after the first two games.
They came into the final period having cut the deficit to one after Brock Nelson’s first goal of the series made it 3-2 off a rebound that went to Kyle Palmieri before it went to Nelson.
They came into the final period with the wind at their backs against a Carolina side that, for once, was trying to find the answers to the Islanders’ questions instead of vice versa.
“I thought we did a good job coming back, getting open, supporting each other,” Noah Dobson said. “They come hard, but obviously we were able to get out of our end cleaner and push. Led to more O-zone time, a lot more chances for us. That’s a positive right now, but, obviously, it stings.”
For the first time in the series, the Islanders looked like the more aggressive, more intense, more desperate side. But they still had to get another one by Frederik Andersen.
And Andersen was not going to let that happen.
He robbed Jean-Gabriel Pageau at the back post. He gloved Alexander Romanov’s shot from his back. He stood up to the Islanders’ pressure at six-on-five.
He put together the sort of third period that the Islanders were hoping to get from Sorokin at the start of the night.
And it ultimately won Carolina the game.
“He’s made some really good saves,” Dobson said of the Carolina netminder, who finished with 29 saves. “Me personally, he’s made two highlight reels. It’s frustrating. We just have to stick with it here.”
The Islanders, just like in Game 1, will feel they did enough to win this game, and not unjustifiably so. The biggest reason they didn’t was the struggles of Sorokin.
Although the Isles managed to tilt the ice for stretches of the opening period, the Hurricanes got on the board first when Brent Burns’ shot from the right point beat Sorokin through traffic 4:36 into the night.
Less than five minutes later, Dmitry Orlov did his teammate one better and beat Sorokin clean from the left point — a shot Sorokin absolutely needed to stop.
Roy, before the game, likened the Islanders’ goaltending tandem to a Cadillac and a Ferrari — an analogy once used by his own goaltending coach with the Canadiens, Francois Allaire, in relation to Brian Hayward and Roy.
“I was the Ferrari,” Roy said. “Could be a little more bumpy and all this. So today, we’re going with the Ferrari.”
Roy put the Ferrari away after Sorokin let in another soft goal — this one from Sebastian Aho — 7:14 into the second, temporarily losing the Islanders momentum after Pierre Engvall had scored at the doorstep.
“It’s part of the job,” Varlamov said when asked what he would say to Sorokin. “Things happen and there’s nothing to say.”
Now the series is 3-0 and the Islanders are hoping and praying for the hockey gods to send them a miracle.
Otherwise, some hard conversations are going to need to happen, and soon.
