EDMONTON, Alberta — This isn’t Ottawa anymore.
The Islanders had a pleasant surprise of a three-game stretch heading into this road trip by netting five of six points and generally playing well despite a crushing set of injuries, but that challenge was nothing like the one they faced on Tuesday night in Edmonton.
This was Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl; Evan Bouchard and Mattias Ekholm; an Oilers team that might have started the season slowly but is packed with stars and won the Western Conference last season.
The Islanders were not going to get through these guys as easily as they got through the Penguins and Senators.
In fact, the Islanders weren’t going to get through them at all, suffering a 4-3 overtime loss on Draisaitl’s game-winner.
Really, the point the Islanders got by virtue of a late rally flattered them after a night spent largely in their own zone.
Ilya Sorokin, along with some desperate defense in front of the goalie, kept them in it with 38 saves, but from the beginning it was clear that walking out of Rogers Place with two points would have constituted highway robbery.
Thanks in no small measure to the goalie, the Islanders came into the final period with a chance to steal this one after Kyle Palmieri tied the game at one off Max Tsyplakov’s feed 15:58 into the second period.
After Ryan Pulock blocked McDavid’s chance at the backdoor, the Islanders could not even clear the puck before Evan Bouchard beat Sorokin with a left-circle shot through traffic to make it 2-1.
Then McDavid, closing in on 1,000 points and with assists on both of Edmonton’s first two goals, contributed a dazzling backhand finish after Oliver Wahlstrom turned the puck over trying to break out of the zone — point No. 998 for No. 97.
That looked like the backbreaker for the Islanders, but to their credit, they hung around.
Anders Lee put in Ryan Pulock’s rebound at the 12:54 mark of the third to make it 3-2 and then struck again after an early pull of the goalie from Patrick Roy, putting in Jean-Gabriel Pageau’s feed to send the game to overtime.
The point the Islanders got for that was, really, a point more than they deserved.
Come overtime, McDavid fed Draisaitl for the winner as Sorokin could not make a 40th save to go with his first 39.
After spending nearly the entire first period threatening, the Oilers finally broke through after Scott Mayfield took an interference penalty with a second to go before intermission.
On the other side of the break, it took McDavid just 36 seconds to find Draisaitl for a one-timer to get on the board for a 1-0 lead.
That did not kill the hope that the Islanders could get something out of this game, but that would prove fleeting nonetheless.
All the injuries aside, this building has been an unhappy place for the Islanders, who have won here just once since the place opened in 2016.
The Oilers, stacked with speed and skill, looked like a team that would present big matchup problems for an Islanders team that just can’t compete in those categories given their injuries and that is indeed what played out.
It’s not the way they wanted to start this five-game trip.
But it also looked on paper like the toughest match of the 12-day trek.
That is to say, it’s not cause to pull the fire alarm.
It is, however, a reminder. The longer the Islanders take to get healthy, the longer they are living in a world where games like this are an uphill battle.
