An overdependence on Ilya Sorokin limited the Islanders all of last season, and has taken all of five games to start costing them this season.
For the second time in his last two starts, Sorokin played an excellent game to keep the Islanders in it against an opponent than looked superior for much of the evening.
And for the second time in his last two starts, Sorokin gave up five goals and came away a loser, 7-4, to the Avalanche.
A pair of Avalanche goals within 12 seconds during the last minute of the second period turned a hard-fought 3-2 Islanders lead into a 4-3 deficit entering the final period.
First Bowen Byram’s shot from the slot made it through traffic and then right off the faceoff, Nathan MacKinnon beat Sorokin clean from the left circle.
That was not the end of the Islanders — Anders Lee would tie the game at four just 4:40 into the last period with a wrist shot from the high slot.
But just over three minutes later, sloppiness with the puck cost the Isles as Mikko Rantanen converted an odd-man rush goal following Adam Pelech’s turnover at the blue line.
The Islanders got a gift in the form of a four-minute power play when Tomas Tatar was called for high-sticking and tripping at 10:06.
But Mathew Barzal negated two minutes of it when he got called for boarding, and the Islanders came up short on the other two.
Ryan Johansen and Ross Colton’s empty-netters in the last minute sealed the game for Colorado.
According to data from the new NHL Edge website, the Islanders came into the night ranking below the 50th percentile league-wide in offensive-zone time at even strength (39.6 percent) and bursts of skating speed over 20 mph (83).
Those are small pieces that point towards what is quickly becoming a bigger issue.
The Islanders did get some offensive-zone time and a forecheck going in the middle period, with good results.
They drew three penalties in the period, with Kyle Palmieri tying the game at two on the first of them.
And at the 5:55 mark, Simon Holmstrom’s wrister gave the Islanders an against-the-odds lead despite the team having been severely outshot to that point.
That, however, was a reversal from the early stages of the night.
In the first period alone, the Islanders took three penalties, got caught up the ice leading to Ryan Johansen’s power-play goal and saw Cale Makar skate through their entire team then roof a backhand.
Sorokin also spent another Avalanche power play saving two sure goals and depending on the iron to stop a third.
Cal Clutterbuck got the Islanders on the board when he tipped Noah Dobson’s shot past Alexandar Georgiev but when that tied the game at the 10:02 mark, the shot count was 10-2 — an indicator of just how tilted the ice was.
As in Buffalo on Saturday and like against New Jersey on Friday, the Islanders struggled to get pucks deep and establish a forecheck, and spent a lot of the game hemmed into their own end — unable to string together a consistent attack without requisite speed.
The offense they did get came in inconsistent spurts. It was enough to make the game close — their goaltending advantage on Tuesday, as always, was very much at play.
But not enough for two points.
The Islanders won’t play teams as fast as the Devils or Avalanche every night, and the randomness of hockey means they won’t be caught out every time they do come up against such opposition.
The issue here is less the 2-2-1 record through five games than it is how similar this team’s flaws look to last year’s — and the worry that it indicates a similar path.
If the goal here really is to compete for a championship and not merely to fight for a wild-card spot again, that is a problem.
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