Islanders: Three takeaways from 3-2 loss to depleted Capitals

The New York Islanders dropped a hotly-contested game to the Washington Capitals on Tuesday evening by a final score of 3-2. The Capitals, who entered the game already missing key players due to league COVID protocols, were even more shorthanded by the time they beat the Islanders with only 27 seconds left in regulation.

Here are three takeaways from the let-down defeat in the nation’s capital.

1. Leo Komarov’s late-game blunders

The blame for this loss is going to rest entirely on the shoulders of Leo Komarov and Barry Trotz, who decided to play Leo in the final minute of the third period to disastrous result again. It may or may not be fair that they’ll shoulder the burden alone, but they will no less.

Komarov was in trademark form on the night. With just over nine minutes remaining in regulation, he boarded Washington’s Lars Eller, sending Eller crumpling to the ice, and the Islanders to a five-minute penalty kill in a tie game.

That was bad enough. But the Islanders penalty kill came up huge, killing off the entire Washington man advantage, and upon release, Leo skated to the visitor’s bench, where he should’ve stayed for the remainder of the night.

You know the rest of the story. Leo saw two more shifts following the penalty, with the final one being where he got defensive coverages mixed up on the back-check, and in the process lost the Islanders the game on Justin Schultz’s late game-winner.

What’s better is that Komarov’s ability on the penalty-kill is likely to be what got him penciled into the lineup in the first place. To be unavailable to perform the role you were tasked with because you caused the penalty is just some next-level stuff.

Even worse, what was Barry Trotz doing putting him back out on the ice, to begin with?

There is absolutely no excuse for Komarov to see the ice in the final four minutes of game action after the penalty he took. Not only was the infraction uncalled for, but it was totally unnecessary, as the hit took place in the offensive zone.

We’ve seen Mathew Barzal and Brock Nelson benched by Trotz for taking bad penalties in the past, and maybe they needed to be benched. But Leo Komarov needed to be benched too, and he wasn’t. Instead, he was rewarded with two more shifts in the game’s dying minutes.

Kieffer Bellows sat on the bench for the final 15:18 after probably his most-memorable shift of the night. It’s understandable that Trotz doesn’t want to ice his young players in the game’s most crucial moments. But if you have a veteran who routinely takes horrible penalties in those important moments, and then doesn’t even lock-in on his defensive assignment, then what difference does it make?

I’ll begrudgingly admit the loss wasn’t all Leo’s fault, nor was it Trotz’s. But the decision to deploy Leo again still has me scratching my head, and it probably will for the foreseeable future.

2. The Islanders lineup was ineffective again

The Islanders shouldn’t have been in a position to lose this game in the final moments of regulation. It just shouldn’t have happened.

This was a Washington Capitals team that entered Tuesday without Alex Ovechkin, Evgeny Kuznetsov, Dmitry Orlov, Ilya Samsonov, or Tom Wilson. That’s a lot of talent to be missing out on, especially when players like Nicklas Backstrom and Lars Eller go down and head for the locker room mid-game.

The Islanders simply shouldn’t have found themselves in a position to lose this game late. Regardless, that’s how it went as the final seconds ticked off on Tuesday.

Barry Trotz’s lineup decisions have been puzzling of late, and this game was no exception.

With Anthony Beauvillier placed on injured reserve, and the Islanders already struggling to find offense entering Tuesday, one would think Trotz’s first inclination would be to take Ross Johnston out of the lineup. Or to never insert Leo Komarov into it, at least.

But Johnston stayed, and Komarov entered. Kieffer Bellows played 9:54 of ice-time at 5v5 and 11:04 total. Oliver Wahlstrom, and a first-round draft pick with offensive upside, continued to sit and collect dust while the team collectively failed to score more than two goals.

That failure to score comes on the back of a game in which Trotz’s Islanders were shutout by Devils goalie Scott Wedgewood. Wedgewood had only days earlier played his first NHL game in nearly three years.

We all knew the Islanders weren’t an offensive dynamo coming into this season. After another lackluster offseason and dead silent free-agent period, it wouldn’t take an expert to know this team’s problems from 2019-20 would carry over to 2020-21.

But it’s more than the offense failing to score. The fourth line turned in another poor performance overall. They failed to generate any energy for a team that badly needed it on Sunday, and again today they really came up short in that regard.

That’s a fourth-line worth $8.350 million, with three players who will be over 30 at the season’s end, that is generally tasked with being this team’s engine.

J.G. Pageau, who the Islanders spent resources to acquire in a trade and are paying $5 million a season to, is having his 5v5 performance squelched by poor linemates on a nightly basis.

Pageau proved he could do more than be a typical 3C last year with Ottawa and with the Islanders over the summer in the playoff bubble. So say what you want about Ross Johnston’s intangibles, he still doesn’t belong in the lineup every night, and if he is going to be there it should be in a fourth-line capacity only.