EDMONTON — In one coach’s eyes, it was “just gutty.”
The challenge for his counterpart? Try to ensure it’s not gutting.
The New York Islanders took a schedule loss to open the Eastern Conference Final but they fell behind the Tampa Bay Lightning 2-0 in this series on Wednesday with a 2-1 defeat that felt more like a self-inflicted wound.
It cuts deeper than the fact Nikita Kucherov’s buzzer-beater won it with only 8.8 seconds left in regulation. The Islanders played the Islanders Way. They were heavy, hungry and in your face.
They’d seen the Lightning reduced to nine forwards during Game 2 and choked off the most dangerous parts of the ice before suffering a 12-second brain camp with overtime in sight. Tampa generated three of its top scoring chances as the clock ticked towards zero, with Yanni Gourde getting stopped on the rush before Ondrej Palat fired wide from the slot and Kucherov buried a Ryan McDonagh pass that could find a place in the Art Gallery of Alberta.
Barry Trotz said it felt like a punch to the gut for his Islanders after the way they responded to Monday’s 8-2 series-opening loss.
“You saw it,” the veteran coach said of the decisive sequence. “They hit the middle, they dumped it in, they changed sides, they threw it to the front of the net, we missed a little coverage in the middle of the net there, we duplicated, a good play.
“Kucherov went around the net. Great pass from the corner, between two of our guys in coverage. He doesn’t need much of a window, so that’s what you saw.”
We also saw a game that should be much more indicative of the way things go the rest of the way in the series. This was a battle. You can glean how much is on the line by the fact the Lightning could potentially be down three key forwards for Friday’s game: Leading scorer Brayden Point, who was injured; Alex Killorn, who was tossed for a late hit on Brock Nelson and may face further discipline from the league; and Barclay Goodrow, who cross-checked Nelson in the back of the head and might be hearing from NHL disciplinarian George Parros as well.
Playing most of Game 2 without Point and Killorn was challenging enough.
Lightning coach Jon Cooper said it basically kept him from line matching because he was forced to prioritize keeping the legs of his remaining players as fresh as possible. He’s a big fan of icing a lineup featuring 11 forwards and seven defencemen and has seen his team rip off six straight victories with that formation inside the bubble.
It allows him to lean more heavily on his top players, finding extra 5-on-5 shifts for Point and Kucherov alongside Cedric Paquette and Pat Maroon, but it also comes with challenges when bodies start going down.
“Rarely do you lose guys in a game, let alone two guys early,” said Cooper. “You’re saved a little bit by the TV timeouts, but one thing players always want is more ice time and so games like that, they were getting what they wanted.
“It’s a gutty, gutty effort because it almost takes the last change out of it, so you’re trying to navigate through whistles, through timeouts, through icings, but in the end it was just gutty.
“That’s what that effort was — it was just gutty.”
It moved the Lightning to within six victories of the Stanley Cup this franchise has been thirsting for. Seeing Cooper celebrate Kucherov’s goal on the bench was a reminder of how much is at stake here.
Jon Cooper's reaction to @86Kucherov's goal is everything. #NHLonSN pic.twitter.com/mbIX2urbpj
— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) September 10, 2020
The Islanders will need to put this in the rear-view mirror quickly.
They certainly showed that they can smother Tampa in the same manner they used to get past Florida, Washington and Philadelphia in prior rounds. But this was a missed opportunity because of the way things broke down with the game on the line and the fact they couldn’t cash on a 38-second 5-on-3 power play during the third period.
“We had our energy, we had our game today, and we just didn’t get the result,” said Trotz. “I liked a lot about our game, other than probably the last 30 seconds of that game. So we’ll just have to improve upon it even more, and go after the next game.”
New York is very much in this series, but the margin for error is slim.
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