COLUMBUS, Ohio — Mat Barzal said Tuesday that it felt like the Islanders were playing out the same script night after night.
That was, pretty much, prophetic for Wednesday night.
The Islanders rolled out new lines, and they didn’t quite dominate possession in the same way against Columbus as they had against Anaheim one night prior.
But details aside, the 2-0 loss to the Blue Jackets on Wednesday was much the same as the 2-1 loss to the Ducks on Tuesday, which was much the same as the three other times the Isles have been shut out this season.
“The only thing missing is the goals,” Kyle Palmieri told The Post. “I think there’s not much else to say.”
After 10 games, the Islanders are sitting at a terrible 3-5-2, and as early as it is in the season, they need to find a way to stop the train from rolling off the tracks.
It’s now four shutouts in 10 games, an astonishing stat, and the Islanders are struggling with confidence every bit as much as that number suggests.
Like Tuesday, the Islanders came out of this one thinking they had the better chances, and that is a fair read. And like Tuesday, it doesn’t matter at all.
“I mean, f–k,” Palmieri said. “It sucks to lose.”
This was a game without much open ice, where 0-0 entering the third seemed roughly accurate to how the match had gone.
The Islanders had already lost 1-0 twice this season, and at this point, you can read the script off book.
The backbreaking moment came 5:43 into the third with a cross-crease feed from Damon Severson.
In a cruel twist, the puck caromed off the skate of Ryan Pulock before finding the back of the net, putting the Islanders in a 1-0 hole that might as well have been 6-0.
There was plenty of time left for the Islanders to push for the tying goal, but that push never really came, with the game flow looking the same at 1-0 as it did at 0-0.
The Blue Jackets formalized the win on Justin Danforth’s empty-netter soon after Semyon Varlamov was pulled.
Try as they might, the Islanders are running into a wall on offense at the moment.
“You can talk and write plays on boards all night,” Palmieri said. “That doesn’t put pucks in the net. That’s on us, and I think every one of us has a job to do. Sometimes we fall short. I think the biggest thing, and the reason we’re all here in this position is you keep getting back up and you keep trying.”
Really, there’s not much else the Islanders can say — there are only so many ways to answer multiple days worth of questions about why they can’t seem to score.
Patrick Roy started Wednesday with four new forward lines, breaking up Bo Horvat and Mat Barzal, then putting the dynamic duo back together for the second period, with Max Tsyplakov on the left side. The second straight night of line-juggling served, mainly, to highlight that nothing seems to be jolting the Islanders out of this.
The second period did produce some chances — Tsyplakov had a look at what appeared to be an open net, and Brock Nelson’s line produced a long offensive zone shift with Elvis Merzlikins losing his stick — but no goals, and whatever momentum was produced faded quickly in the third.
“I think it’s just a matter of confidence right now,” Roy said. “Sometimes we could wait an extra second to take a better shot, we make it a little quicker than it should be. Sometimes it’s the opposite. We should shoot right away and we hold onto it. … Chances are there. We just need to continue.”
The struggles are in part due to injuries, but those are just one factor of many.
They can’t heal Anthony Duclair or Alexander Romanov, but the Islanders’ top brass — Roy and Lou Lamoriello — need to come up with a fix soon. It’s still early, and the Islanders have weathered worse stretches in terms of results.
But they are quickly digging themselves a hole in the standings.
“There’s lots of emotions you can start feeling, frustration, all that stuff,” Noah Dobson told The Post. “It’s gonna do no good.”
Neither will anything else until pucks start finding the back of the net.
