Islanders see how far they have to go with key deficiency exposed in eye-opening loss to Stars

DALLAS — That will put a halt on the Islanders’ fledgling momentum.

It’s not merely that the Stars snapped the Islanders’ five-game points streak on Sunday night, beating them 6-3 at American Airlines Center. It’s that the how of it included so many reminders of the Islanders’ limitations.

Namely, their speed, or lack thereof. The Islanders have shown they can play around it — indeed, they did at points on Sunday — but doing so requires impeccable detail and decision-making down the lineup. When pieces are off, when they are playing one of the league’s faster teams or both, as was the case here, it is so much harder to get away with.

The Stars could get pucks behind Adam Pelech and Ryan Pulock and then beat them to it. They could handle dump-ins from the Islanders’ workmanlike third and fourth lines with ease, moving the puck out before the Islanders could start their forecheck. Jason Robertson can capitalize on a split-second of indecision from Brayden Schenn behind his own net and turn it into a goal.

Put all that together and you have a steep, uphill climb for the Islanders to stay in a game.

To their credit, the Islanders did so anyway. It said something good about the Islanders’ character that they fought back down 1-0 and 2-1 and 3-2 to go into the last 20 minutes tied at three after Schenn deposited Anthony Duclair’s feed from behind the net past Jake Oettinger at 17:45 of the second.

What they couldn’t do, though, was change the pattern of the game.

So 4:10 into the third, Wyatt Johnston gave Dallas its fourth lead of the night, getting open in the slot after the Islanders overcommitted to the strong side of the ice and burying one.

This time, the Islanders didn’t have the immediate answer. Robertson floated behind Pelech and was sprung by Tyler Seguin’s pass before scoring to make it 5-3. 

Adding insult to injury, Mikko Rantanen — the arch-villain last time the Islanders played here — made it 6-3 mere minutes later.

Ilya Sorokin, who gave up five or more goals just four times last season — three of them after March 5 — finished with stops on just 32 of the 38 shots he saw, albeit without impressive defense in front of him.

By the end of the night, pockets of the crowd chanted “Otter’s better.”

At so many different points before that, it looked like a game in which the Islanders could easily collapse.

They didn’t record a shot for over seven minutes to start the game. When they did notch a dangerous chance, the Stars came down the other end and Seguin scored on the rush. There wasn’t much forecheck to speak of; rather, it was the Stars who were consistently able to get pucks in deep and get to work.

Still, the Islanders found ways to stay in it. Matthew Schaefer turned on the jets and blew past Johnston to tie the game at one, then after Robertson turned over Schenn and scored less than a minute later, the Islanders fought right back.

Kyle Palmieri made an excellent play to catch Pulock’s shot off the endboards and flip it into the net on his backhand to tie it at two, and after Justin Hryckowian made a similar play to score on the power play for Dallas, Schenn atoned for his error.

Finally in the third, the duct tape and glue way they’d played all night caught up with them.

Well as they’d performed through 10 games, the 11th was a reminder that there are still plenty of ways to exploit the Islanders.