There was no late magic waiting for the Islanders on Tuesday.
Only late heartbreak, as a 3-2 lead with five minutes left against the Bruins turned into a 4-3 shootout loss at UBS Arena after Marat Khusnutdinov both tied it in regulation and won it in the shootout for the visitors, leaving the Islanders with just one point on a night where they felt themselves the better team.
That was not a hard feeling to justify either given the Isles led 2-1, then 3-2; that one of Boston’s goals came on a bizarre rebound that went off Anders Lee and in; that the Islanders gave up few chances at five-on-five; and that their spirited defense of Matthew Schaefer offered a galvanizing moment when the 18-year-old was roughed up by Nikita Zadorov in the second period.
“Look, you’re gonna have nights where you play a good hockey game and come up short,” Lee said. “Tonight may be one of those.”
Indeed, the Islanders seemed to seize the game with two hands when Schaefer, fresh out of the penalty box, fed Bo Horvat just over five minutes into the final period for a 3-2 lead.
But with nearly 15 minutes to defend that lead, it was not done yet.
The Bruins tied it up with just over five minutes left in the period, with extended pressure around the Islanders net paying off when Khusnutdinov dove on Fraser Minten’s rebound to beat Ilya Sorokin.
Charlie McAvoy’s high stick to Jonathan Drouin gave the Islanders a power play with 1:44 to go, but they could not convert.
After an uneventful overtime, Boston made the Islanders pay in the skills competition, with Jeremy Swayman stopping all three shots while Sorokin let in one to Khusnutdinov.
“I know Sorokin,” Khusnutdinov, a fellow Russian, told reporters in the Bruins dressing room. “Maybe, try to play the first move, first fake shot. Just went with a shoulder shake and it was a good shot.”
That put a sour end to a night in which the Islanders looked like they were gearing toward an emotional third straight win.
It wasn’t until after Anthony Duclair had rifled a shot from the top of the slot to put the Islanders up 1-0 at the 5:11 mark of the second that the match started to grow in animosity.
A few minutes later, Zadorov learned one of the defining Islanders credos the hard way when he dumped Schaefer below the goal line at 9:18 of the second: no one touches Schaefer.
Three different Islanders immediately tried to tackle Zadorov, who was eventually called for interference and a roughing double-minor.
“No,” Schaefer said, asked if he was surprised by the hit. “There’s gonna be battles every night.”
This is the message the Islanders are trying to send to the league in response to the target that has been placed on Schaefer’s back. The game, afterward, took a distinctly different tone as the Islanders started to impose their own physicality on Boston.
The Bruins got an opening in the form of a fortuitous bounce, when Viktor Arvidsson’s rebound deflected off Lee’s skate and into the Islanders net. Though Horvat put the Islanders up 2-1 less than a minute later, finishing a two-on-one rush sprung by Emil Heineman, five penalties taken by the Isles in the second period soon caught up with them.
Pavel Zacha’s power-play goal with 2:31 left in the second broke a streak of 10 straight successful PKs for the Islanders, and sent it into the third tied.
Score aside, though, the Islanders had given next to nothing through two periods: 15 shots on goal, just 11 at five-on-five, and with Sorokin looking sharp.
Indications were this was not a game they were poised to lose.
Indications, however, are not always all they are chalked up to be.
“To me it was a hard-fought game,” Roy said. “A game that could have gone either way. I thought we played well enough to win, absolutely.”
