RALEIGH, N.C. — As the Islanders await the holiday break that will give them three days of rest before the schedule picks right back up again in fifth gear, they are also hanging by a thread onto the good vibes that have sustained throughout the month of December.
Their nine overtime losses this season, the latest being Wednesday night to the Capitals, tend to put a haze over objective analysis of this team.
It is no different now after the Islanders have lost three of their last four — two in overtime, two on the second end of a back-to-back — heading into the pre-Christmas finale on Saturday against the Hurricanes.
It is hard to know what to make of that four-game stretch, in which the Islanders conjured a point from nowhere against the Caps while making one disappear five nights earlier at home against Boston.
But compared to the six wins in seven that preceded it, the Islanders haven’t quite played with the same oomph.
That much is clear.
An example: Mathew Barzal had, through the former six games, scored 11 points (four goals, seven assists).
Through the last four, he has scored just three (no goals, 3 assists) while driving play at not quite as high a level as the Isles had gotten used to seeing at five-on-five.
That is not to pick on Barzal.
To a man, the Islanders played tired hockey on Wednesday, just as they had on Saturday in Montreal.
Lackluster stretches happen over an 82-game course, and if the Islanders can squeeze out 1-1-2 while playing lackluster hockey, then it means their version of bad is survivable.
“Right now, to be honest, we’re gonna focus on the positive of coming back in tonight’s game,” Anders Lee said after the 3-2 overtime loss Wednesday. “Yeah, we don’t want to give up any points, nobody does. It’s frustrating. We can definitely have better overtimes. So we’ll focus on that as well, the combination of both. At the end of the day, all you can do is look back on this and see how you can get better.”
Fair enough.
The Islanders did, after all, enter Thursday tied with Philadelphia for second place in the Metropolitan Division.
But what they can’t do is keep playing like this for an extended period.
Saturday night, with two full days between games, would be a good time to snap back into the sort of game they were playing the first two weeks of the month.
It would be a shame if a December in which the Islanders have lost just once in regulation included the black mark of four losses in five as the team headed home for the holidays.
That’s particularly true in the standings, where the 17-12-3 Hurricanes sat directly behind the Islanders in the Metropolitan Division.
The stretch of five straight divisional opponents on either side of Christmas, with two each against Washington and Pittsburgh along with this trip to Raleigh, represents some of the most important games the Islanders will play for a while.
In the new year, it’s another six weeks before they see a team in the Metropolitan Division.
There is a need to strike while the iron is hot, even if it seems to be cooling off right now.
“It just feels like every game is huge right now,” Bo Horvat said Tuesday. “We’ve got really big games coming up, teams that are playing really good right now and we gotta be at our best going into those games.”
The last time the Isles played at PNC Arena, they secured an overtime win that started that stretch of six victories in seven.
This time around, rekindling that energy would get things moving back in the right direction.
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