Travis Hamonic, where art thou?
The Islanders seemingly have never missed their No. 1 defenseman as badly as they did on Thursday night at the Coliseum, when Sidney Crosby and the Penguins ran roughshod over anyone and everyone the Isles threw at him en route to a 6-4 Pittsburgh win.
Hamonic has been out since presumably sustaining a concussion on Jan. 12 in Dallas, missing his sixth straight game and continuing to be sidelined indefinitely.
Well, Crosby and his merry henchmen are hard enough to handle with a full ensemble, so the Islanders de facto shutdown man, Andrew MacDonald, and his new blue-line partner, Brian Strait, had a nightmarish evening in trying to contain Crosby, as MacDonald finished minus-4 and Strait minus-3.
“Some guys had a tough night,” said a rather irate Jack Capuano, his team falling to 21-25-7. “You guys watched the game.”
Of course, it can’t all be placed at the feet of two defensemen, and boy how the takeaway from this game would have changed if things turned out just a tad differently. Such as if not for the late heroics of Penguins (36-13-2) backup goalie Jeff Zatkoff, shaky throughout but astonishingly quick getting from post to post on an Islanders five-on-three with just over six minutes remaining, somehow stretching his left pad out to deny Frans Neilsen and preserve the Penguins’ 5-4 lead.
“He did make a good [save], but I’ve got to get [the puck] up,” Nielsen said. “I hit his pads a couple times. It was tough, when you get a chance like that, five-on-three, we’ve got to be better.”
In a rematch of last year’s first-round playoff series — and yes, it does have to be mentioned every time, because if these games aren’t the most entertaining in the Eastern Conference, then you’re not watching — the Islanders took off early, getting two goals in the opening 8:21, one apiece from Michael Grabner and Brock Nelson to stake a 2-0 lead.
Yet before the first could end, watch Crosby chip the puck in and skate right around MacDonald, setting up Chris Kunitz’s 25th of the year. Then watch Crosby two minutes later skate by MacDonald to the front of the net, push Strait out of the way and lift a little shot over Kevin Poulin for his 27th, tying it, 2-2.
“It’s our job to stop him and defend him,” MacDonald said. “Our job is to limit his chances, and tonight he made some good plays and they capitalized. We didn’t do our jobs.”
The second period was worse, with Penguins rookie defenseman Olli Maatta skating through unimpeded to the net to make it 3-2, and then Kris Letang banging home an inevitable power-play goal for the league’s best man-advantage group, making it 4-2.
And yet the Islanders pushed back, getting third-period goals from Josh Bailey and Kyle Okposo, but it was yet another defensive blunder, this one from the rookie tandem of Matt Donovan and Calvin de Haan, which led to an Evgeni Malkin backdoor goal.
With the Islanders net empty in the final second, MacDonald put the icing on the cake with a turnover. Brandon Sutter found the empty net to end it.
“The frustration part for me is what I told the guys after the second period — you’ve got to move, you can’t watch,” Capuano said. “If we’re going to have any success, that’s the way we’re going to have to play.”
And they’re going to need Hamonic back, as soon as possible.