Skidding Islanders look like a shell of themselves in concerning loss to Sharks

SAN JOSE, Calif. — The fourth loss in a row for the Islanders was more alarming than the first three for two big reasons.

First, the Sharks are not the Oilers, Hurricanes or Devils. Talented they may be, but the club that beat the Islanders 3-2 at SAP Center on Monday night is not a Stanley Cup contender. San Jose is now 8-11-1, still very much figuring itself out.

Second, if you are looking at process and not outcome, the Islanders played poorly, and it’s not the first time lately. They were hemmed in their zone frequently, they gave up chances in the middle of the ice, they struggled to hang onto possession of the puck or generate a forecheck. It was, in other words, not Pete DeBoer hockey.

That was excusable against the league’s top class. This, less so, even if it took a shootout winner from Ivar Stenberg to give San Jose the win.

Even had they gotten away with a win — and to be fair, the Islanders were close to doing so — this was still a performance that invited scrutiny.

Of course, it all comes with the big caveat that there is “potential,” to use DeBoer’s word, for Mathew Barzal, Matias Maccelli and Ryan Pulock to return from injury by the end of this trip. That ought to be a game-changer, and there is no doubt at all that a lot of what’s happened over the last week-plus has been about the collective toll of the injuries catching up with the Islanders.

Still, they were bossed around for long stretches on Monday, particularly by San Jose’s top line of Michael Misa, Macklin Celebrini and Will Smith. The clubs were tied at two entering a heated third period after Kyle MacLean’s hit on Stenberg provoked Ty Dellandrea to fight MacLean and Barclay Goodrow to fight Mitchell Chaffee off the ensuing faceoff.

That did at least seem to wake the Islanders up a little bit as they started the third on the front foot. 

Maybe, after the fury at officials in Saturday’s Islanders loss, there was some karmic justice as well. A Victor Eklund hit on Kiefer Sherwood initially called a major on Eklund was reversed into a roughing double minor on Mason Marchment, handing the Islanders a four-minute power play midway through the third.

The fledgling momentum, though, was squandered when Anthony Duclair and Ondrej Palat both took penalties trying to stop a shorthanded San Jose rush, putting the Islanders at four-on-three and, eventually, leaving both teams scoreless on their respective power plays.

Where the game started to tilt back to the Islanders, it reverted to a track meet before overtime.

There was no missed call to complain about this time at three-on-three, only an end-to-end five minutes without resolution. Of Ilya Sorokin’s 37 saves, his best few may have been after regulation.

It took the Sharks eight rounds of the shootout to beat Sorokin, but Stenberg finally did.

The best minutes of the game for the Islanders were the first handful. After Ben Hutton opened a 1-0 lead by getting to a deflected Simon Holmstrom pass first, the Sharks started pressing, and the visitors never quite recovered their mojo.

Stenberg tied it at one on a deflection from Tyler Toffoli at 16:41 of the first after Logan Stanley turned the puck over exiting the zone. Toffoli added a goal himself at 12:12 of the second on a flukey attempted pass that hit Adam Pelech’s visor and deflected in.

That tied the game at two, with the Islanders’ second goal having come on an Eklund power play goal. The young Swede has now scored in three consecutive games and immediately validated his promotion to the top power-play unit with a one-time rip off Brayden Schenn’s pass to the slot.

At five-on-five, though, it was all Sharks. They took the initiative, they controlled play, they controlled the game.

If you are the Islanders, that might be more a cause for concern than the result itself.