All year long, the Islanders have been vexed by the way goaltender interference is called.
On Monday night, they were furious.
On Monday night, they saw a regulation win turn into a shootout loss on one of the most questionable calls of the season, as Kyle Palmieri’s game-winner with 8.9 seconds left in regulation was waved off — giving way to a 4-3 Blue Jackets victory in the skills competition and a raging mad Islanders dressing room.
“I think it was f–king embarrassing,” Palmieri said. “Couldn’t disagree more with the call.”
“I don’t think anyone in this room agrees with this decision,” Alexander Romanov told The Post.
Coach Patrick Roy went as far as to call the NHL’s situation room in Toronto “afraid” to overturn calls made on the ice.
“Palmieri was out of the crease and he tipped it in. I think their goalie [Elvis Merzlikins] pushed him away at the same time,” Roy said. “So that’s how I see it. If Toronto’s afraid to overturn calls made by the referee, we don’t need Toronto.”
There’s plenty of reasons why the Islanders lost this game, from their putrid power play handing back momentum to Columbus after a dominant first period to a passive third period to Roy’s odd decision to lead off the shootout with Anthony Duclair — who promptly fumbled the puck away.
But if the Islanders miss the playoffs by a point — and with the Islanders, Rangers, Canadiens and Blue Jackets all separated by two points after Monday night, that’s not a remote possibility — they’ll have good reason to be upset.
The referees waved off Palmieri’s goal right away, which is odd to begin with when it comes to a tight goalie interference call, and it stood after a lengthy review, despite the video evidence being mushy at best.
Palmieri said referee Michael Markovic told him there was contact initiated in the crease by way of explanation.
“I guess the goalie needs five minutes to get reset and ready for the shot,” Palmieri said. “It looked like [Markovic] couldn’t wait to wave it off.”
Before the fiasco at the end of regulation, the Islanders had already yakety-saxed a pair of leads, in large part due to a power play that is in dire straits.
They built an early 2-0 lead and gave the Blue Jackets no quarter at five-on-five, but things started to go wrong as soon as Damon Severson was called for tripping Bo Horvat early in the second.
Columbus easily killed off the penalty, and the Islanders’ disjointedness suddenly extended into even strength. Shortly thereafter, Adam Fantilli cut the lead in half with a goal off the rush.
The second power play was even worse, with Boone Jenner tying the game off a shorthanded rush at 17:13 of the second. Anders Lee put the Islanders back up 3-2 almost immediately after the game went back to even strength, but the damage had been done and the door had been opened.
“We didn’t do a good job entering the zone, we didn’t do a good job to release the pressure when we had the puck and we didn’t do a good job competing for it. And we didn’t do a good job to see our options,” Roy said of his five-on-four units. “That’s all.”
Even at five-on-five, where the Islanders had absolutely dominated earlier, they spent the third period passive and pushed onto their heels, inevitably leading to Kirill Marchenko tying the game at three.
After Palmieri’s goal was called off, both teams traded chances in overtime before Fantilli scored the lone goal in the shootout to seal the win for Columbus.
Quietly, that’s now three times in a row the Islanders have let a game they’ve been leading into the third get to overtime — a worrying reminiscence of their bad habits at the start of the season.
“We stopped playing in their zone,” Roy said. “We stopped keeping things simple, quick on the wall, bringing the puck [up ice]. So we lost a lot of battles.”
Despite all that, Roy said he felt the Islanders deserved to win.
The immediate damage in the standings isn’t colossal — they’re now tied with the Rangers on points and one behind Montreal, though the Canadiens have a game in hand. But the Islanders, who have clinched postseason berths in Games 81 and 82 over the last two seasons, know just how much every point matters more than most.
“I don’t know what to say anymore,” Roy said. “If you’re outside the crease, I always thought that was the place to be. That’s all.
“Are you telling me the [Juraj] Slafkovsky goal [where the Islanders lost a challenge on Thursday] was not worse than what we saw tonight?”
To that, no one had an answer.
