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RALEIGH, N.C. — This was the sort of ugly Game 1 that the Islanders felt right at home in, with the sort of tie game entering the final period that has become second nature for this team during a season when seemingly every game came down to the wire.
So even if the Islanders never quite had their A-game on Saturday night, the 3-1 series-opening loss to Carolina represents a missed opportunity that they could come to rue later on.
A year ago, the difference in the six-game series between these teams came in the margins — the Islanders losing a pair of games in overtime and a third by one goal — and again, that was where Carolina proved its supremacy on Saturday evening.
Neither team quite had offensive momentum entering the final period tied at one, but following a helter-skelter start to the night, the Islanders had settled in quite nicely and done an excellent job suppressing a Hurricanes team that, as you may have heard, loves to shoot the puck.
Through 40 minutes, Carolina had just 13 shots on goal and the Islanders had done about as well as they could have hoped in keeping them away from the middle of the ice. For all the talk about the Islanders needing their goalies to steal the series, Semyon Varlamov hadn’t needed to do all that much.
But just 3:43 into the third period — after Frederik Andersen had saved an excellent Noah Dobson chance a few minutes prior — Stefan Noesen put Carolina in front, converting after the puck fell to him off Brady Skjei’s deflection.
After the Islanders had spent the second period preventing the Hurricanes from establishing a foothold in the offensive zone, this goal came as a product of exactly that, following multiple shifts of sustained pressure.
The Islanders started to press from there and nearly found the net with Kyle Palmieri’s diving wraparound attempt on the power play, which brushed harmlessly off the post.
When they pulled Varlamov for an extra attacker, all that happened was Martin Necas finding an empty net.
A few inches here, a few inches there and the Islanders would be looking pretty good right now. But there’s no trophies for that.
It looked as though the game might slip away early after Evgeny Kuznetsov converted on the power play just 1:35 into the match following Anders Lee’s holding penalty, beating Semyon Varlamov up high off a faceoff where the Islanders’ PK looked disoriented.
Kyle MacLean — playing up the lineup on the third line thanks to Jean-Gabriel Pageau’s absence — tied it back up at the 8:20 mark, getting on Lee’s rebound from Alexander Romanov’s tipped shot. That proved to be a needed lifeline for the Islanders, who looked overwhelmed in the first five minutes.
Unfortunately for the Islanders, it was also pretty close to 100 percent of the offense they would get in this game.
As good as they were in their own zone, the Islanders struggled to establish a forecheck or put sustained pressure on Frederik Andersen.
In the rare moments they did, Andersen looked to struggle tracking the puck and with his rebound control, but the Isles were never in position to take advantage.
And the power play, sticking with the trend line coming into the series, couldn’t come up with a goal despite a pair of chances.
If there’s a blueprint to winning this series, maybe the Islanders found some pieces of it on Saturday. Certainly they can make things interesting by replicating their defensive effort.
But given their underdog status, it’s hard to view this game as anything other than a missed opportunity.
The Islanders had the chance to put the Stanley Cup favorites on the back foot. They didn’t take it. And who knows if there will be another one.
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