Islanders Play As Sloppy As The Weather In Loss To Vancouver

Elmont, NY– High-powered winds and torrential downpours made for miserable weather across Long Island on Tuesday.

And still, the conditions outside weren’t only slightly worse than the ones inside UBS Arena, where the sloppy play of the New York Islanders resulted in a 5-2 loss to the Vancouver Canucks.

When the Islanders met the Canucks back in November, Filip Hronek scored the overtime goal, and he scored the opening one when the two teams reconvened.

With Vancouver maintaining possession in the attacking end and the Islanders already gassed from killing off a Mathew Barzal tripping penalty, Casey Cizikas crumbled to the ice after blocking a slapshot off his left knee. While Cizikas remained down, Hronek had all the space in the world inside the right faceoff circle to rip a shot past Ilya Sorokin’s blocker to put the Canucks on the board.

Cizikas rose like a sinkhole and slowly made his way to the Islanders’ dressing room with his arms draped over the shoulders of two trainers. He briefly returned to play three shifts before leaving the game at 1:41 of the second.

Even when the Islanders did have five players on their feet, they gave Vancouver far too much room to work with.

Quinn Hughes was virtually allowed to walk untouched through the slot and fire his 11th goal of the season at 18:42 of the first.

Already down 2-0, the Islanders took a pair of penalties to begin the second. The Islanders successfully killed off both, but only in practice, as they struggled to gain possession of the puck, let alone clear it from their zone.

Adam Pelech, who made his return to the lineup after a 20-game spell on long-term injured reserve, tried to skate the puck out of danger, but he didn’t account for Elias Pettersson.

The league’s eighth-leading point scorer added one more to his total as he and Brock Boeser toyed with Sorokin before he scored his 20th of the year.

Tyler Myers also made the most of an Islanders defensive lapse. Although he entered the zone with three other Canucks, he had no issue with taking a slap shot himself from below the right faceoff circle to make it 3-1 at 17:24 of the second.

Sorokin finished the night with 29 saves on 33 shots.

He was spared the misery of allowing five goals in back-to-back games as Dakota Joshua’s tally came with an empty net.

Brock Nelson was the one Islander who seemed to have a beat on Vancouver netminder Casey DeSmith, scoring twice to raise his team lead in goals to 19.

But aside from Nelson’s two goals, DeSmith stopped the other 18 shots he faced.

With the loss, the Islanders fall to 18-12-10. They’re now 2-4-1 in their last six games.

The Islanders will play the Toronto Maple Leafs at UBS Arena on Thursday in their final home game before hitting the road for another week-long trip.

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