The Islanders are out of answers and short on excuses. After losing 10 of their past 11 games to fall within one more loss of NHL-.500, and with their January record an abysmal 2-8-3, there’s nothing left to say.
They just have to win.
“It’s definitely tough, but we gotta dig deep,” Casey Cizikas told reporters in Ottawa on Wednesday night after a 2-1 loss to the Senators, a team the Islanders beat without much issue in the same building earlier this season. “We gotta find a way.”
Even with their atrocious run of form, the Islanders were still just five points out of a playoff spot going into Thursday — which underscores just how stunning it has been to see them play so poorly in January. They may not have looked like Stanley Cup contenders earlier this season, but they were on course to make the playoffs.
The road to getting back there, they hope, will start this weekend. The Islanders will play a pair of home games against the Red Wings and Golden Knights before going into their bye week, which is paired with All-Star Weekend. The seven days off are beckoning for a team that seems as if it needs to take a breath and regroup. But first, getting through the next two games with points is a must.
The Red Wings were just three points behind the Islanders with four games in hand going into Thursday. With another loss, the Islanders might quickly fall behind Detroit in the standings — and they already need to jump the Sabres, the Panthers and either the Capitals or the Penguins to get back into a playoff spot.
“Right now we’re in a tough spot,” Brock Nelson told reporters Wednesday. “But we have two games at home before the break. We want to go and get those two games. Give us a chance to reset and make a good push.”
Things had reached a high enough temperature going into the game at Ottawa that general manager Lou Lamoriello addressed reporters Wednesday morning to take some of the heat off head coach Lane Lambert.
“Our coaching staff has done as good a job as you could possibly ask,” Lamoriello said. “I have no reservations there whatsoever.”
Whether that means anything in the long term is up for debate — Lamoriello made similar comments about Barry Trotz last March, then fired him in May — but it does ease a lot of the pressure on the first-year coach. Lamoriello has taken the brunt of criticism from the fan base, and he acknowledged that on Wednesday.
“They’re passionate and that’s the first thing I recognized when I came here. I would never want them to be any different. … I respect that, I welcome that,” he said. “You should be able to take bullets [as a general manager]. It’s right for them to be upset.”
The stats tell the story here. The Islanders are 3-for-59 (5.08 percent) on the power play since Dec. 10. During the run of 10 losses in 11 games, they’ve scored just 18 goals and haven’t scored any in third periods — including at Ottawa, when they desperately needed to tie the score.
There has been bad puck luck, which plays a role in every scoring drought. But the lack of scoring has gotten well beyond the point at which it can be explained away by bad bounces, and everyone knows it.
“The chances are there, we just gotta capitalize on them,” Cizikas said. “I think that’s the frustrating thing. We’re getting these opportunities. It’s not like we’re not working for them. But we just gotta bury them when we get them.”