RALEIGH, N.C. — The first 25 minutes might have been the best 25 minutes the Islanders played on Monday night.
But that doesn’t mean a whole lot when the Islanders recorded just three shots on net in the last 35 minutes.
Even before that, they were beyond fortunate to hold a three-goal lead in the first place before letting it go to waste in a crushing 5-3 Game 2 defeat to the Hurricanes. And they knew it.
“I don’t think anything really changed to be honest,” captain Anders Lee said. “We weren’t as clean getting out of our zone tonight. Their forecheck was good for most of the evening and we didn’t get the clears when we needed the clears. We buried our chances early when we had them. They kept coming at us like we expected, but we just weren’t able to break it tonight.”
Had the Islanders held on to win, it would have been more an indictment of Frederik Andersen — who let in three goals on just 12 shots and was starting a second consecutive game for the first time since returning from injury in March — than anything else.
The ’Canes finished with an astonishing 6.15 expected goals, 23 high-danger chances, 34 shots on goal and 110 shot attempts by Natural Stat Trick’s count.
Even accounting for Carolina being a team known for shooting the puck at a high frequency, even accounting for the Islanders blocking a lot of those shot attempts, there is no way to hand-wave that.
“It’s more than just the last few minutes of that game,” coach Patrick Roy said. “I felt like when we took those penalties [in the second period] that gave them the momentum and the game shifted big-time. And for some reason, we started losing those one-on-one battles and we didn’t do a very good job along the walls to get those pucks out and they took advantage of it to regroup.”
Even that interpretation of events — Roy added he liked the way the Islanders started the game — counted as generous.
Carolina recorded the night’s first seven shots on net, with the Islanders going the game’s first 13:30 without testing Andersen.
Their first unblocked shot attempt — which missed the net — didn’t even come until the game was over six minutes old.
This was the opposite of Game 1, when the Islanders couldn’t take advantage of Andersen despite having the majority of the opportunities.
If they had put more pressure on a struggling goalie at any point in the night, the conversation now would likely be swirling around Carolina’s uneasy situation in nets with the series tied at one.
If, if, if.
