Too little. Too late.
The Islanders finally seemed to solve their goal-scoring woes, at least temporarily, by netting a pair of them within 33 seconds of each other in the final minutes of last night’s Coliseum match against the Flyers.
But those were the only two goals the Islanders managed, and they came after last-place Philadelphia had built a 3-0 lead. And so despite outshooting the Flyers, 42-35, the Islanders still dropped their fourth straight, a 3-2 decision in front of 10,461 increasingly restless fans.
“There’s a difference between a sense of panic and a sense of urgency,” coach Ted Nolan said. “We don’t need to panic, but we do need more of a sense of urgency.”
They finally developed that late in the third period, but too often during the team’s recent slide, it hasn’t been there.
In the first three games of the losing streak, the Islanders set a franchise record by going without a goal for more than 186 minutes. Last night, they failed to score until Jason Blake finally got one past Robert Esche with 2:57 to go.
But that’s not all that ails the Islanders, who have struggled on the power play all year and didn’t score with a man advantage again last night.
“It’s a whole host of things,” Nolan said. “It’s not just scoring goals, it’s the stuff leading up to it. We need a little more determination, a little more grittiness.”
His players agreed.
“We have to be ready to go from the start,” Blake said.
Last night, evidently, they weren’t. And since they have been losing ground in the Eastern Conference, games like this one are even more damaging.
“It’s frustrating,” Blake said. “These are games that we need to win.”
But that doesn’t mean they are completely discouraged. Mike Sillinger, who scored the Islanders’ second goal, pointed out the number of shots they threw at Esche, and that even though they seem to be relying on Blake’s line too much, they will fix their recent problems.
“We just got this scoring drought at the wrong time,” Sillinger said. “We’re snake-bitten.”
Not completely. The cellar-dwelling Flyers didn’t take a three-goal lead by accident. But when Ryan Potulny slipped one past Mike Dunham to give the Flyers a 3-0 lead at 16:36 of the third period, it proved to be the one that allowed them to pick up their third straight win for the first time all season.
Philadelphia opened the scoring 6:26 into the second period when Mike Knuble scored his 16th of the year, wristing one past Dunham.
The Flyers scored again on a Kyle Calder goal with 11:32 to go in the third after a scrum in front of the Islanders’ goal, the kind of goal the Islanders could use to get out of their recent scoring funk.
“That’s what we’re looking for,” Blake said. “Again, we had lots of opportunities to score and it’s frustrating when you don’t capitalize.”
Nolan, however, continued to be even more distressed.
“When things go wrong, everything goes wrong,” Nolan said.
Flyers 3 Isles 2
