TAMPA, Fla. — The Islanders played well enough to win on Saturday night against a team the entire league uses as a measuring stick.
But at the end of the night, the scoresheet read 5-3 in favor of the Lightning, and the Islanders had fallen to 2-3 on the season, with their next four games all against teams that got to at least the second round of the playoffs last season. That is the reality of the situation: There are no moral victories, not for a team trying to prove itself the way the Islanders are.
“We did a lot of things that we wanted to do,” coach Lane Lambert said. “Seventy-two shot attempts, [48] hits, I thought we competed hard. We made some mistakes, it ended up in the back of our net.”
The Islanders managed to hang around in the third period, with Ryan Pulock putting them within a goal with a wrist shot past Brian Elliott 5:45 into the final frame. But Alex Killorn sealed it for the Lightning with a rush goal off Paul’s feed at 14:08 amid a sequence in which the two teams traded a couple of chances each after the Islanders had killed off a penalty.
“Mistakes are gonna happen,” Mathew Barzal said. “They had a few tonight that we buried on and we had a few that they buried on. I thought the game could’ve gone either way.”
Twice on the night, the Islanders followed a stretch of good play by giving up a goal to stymie their own momentum.
The first came at 10:43 of the first period, when Tampa Bay’s Brayden Point scored the opening goal, burying a rebound from Nikita Kucherov. To that point, the Islanders had badly outshot the Lightning during the first period. Though Matt Martin quickly tied it for the Islanders, putting away the puck from the slot after Corey Perry turned it over at 12:29, that momentum was short-lived.
Brandon Hagel put the Lightning back in front before the period was over, scoring off a Point rebound that caromed against the crossbar, then off Sorokin’s back. Though the Islanders managed to kill off a five-on-three at the start of the second, they faltered almost as soon as the game went back to even strength, with Corey Perry making it 3-1 on a cross-ice feed from Pierre-Edouard Bellemare, just after Barzal had passed up what seemed to be a wide open look from the slot on the other end.
Anthony Beauvillier got one back at 9:36 of the second, but then came another strong run of play followed by another goal for the opposition — this one when Nick Paul scored to make it 4-2, Tampa Bay, at the buzzer signaling the second intermission.
“I don’t think we thought the period was over,” Lambert said. “Mistakes happen and that one hurt.”
On one hand, the Lightning are without question a better team than the Islanders, and losing to them at Amalie Arena is far from a disaster. On the other hand, it was a rare moment in which Tampa Bay looked vulnerable, with Elliott in goal and after a slow start to the season.
“What went wrong, I don’t know,” Barzal said. “Just gave them some good chances, they buried them. [I] liked our game, so it was a tough one.”
After losing 4-1 in a disastrous effort against the Devils on Thursday, finding some momentum would have been ideal for the Islanders, who will take the ice again less than 24 hours after this one, Sunday in Sunrise, Fla. against the Panthers.
“Definitely a step in the right direction,” Barzal said. “Liked our compete, liked our battle. Thought everyone was moving so definitely a better game than the other night.”
The Islanders, though, exited Amalie Arena with the same number of points in hand as they had exited UBS Arena with on Thursday: Zero.