The Islanders returned home and fell to the surging Sabres in what evolved into a 5-0 blowout after a competitive period and a half.<\/p>\n
Bo Horvat returned to the lineup but was one of 13 Islanders shooters who failed to beat Alex Lyon \u2014 indeed, Horvat logged four SOG while Emil Heineman had six \u2014 and the trio of Mat Barzal, Anders Lee and Anthony Duclair was even benched for the third period. That came after their backchecking sin on Tage Thompson\u2019s goal that made it 2-0 as the second period wound down.<\/p>\n
The game was essentially put away 25 seconds into the third, when David Rittich made a stick poke reach that left him unequipped to stop Jason Zucker\u2019s sweeping shot, Zucker\u2019s second goal of the game. After Patrick Roy pulled Rittich for a sixth attacker with over seven minutes to go, Rasmus Dahlin put in an empty netter at 14:02 to make it 4-0, then the Sabres tacked one on less than a minute later for the final margin.<\/p>\n
The Islanders had a few good chances and looks when it was still close, most notably a Max Shabanov breakaway that Lyon turned away. And it wasn\u2019t a great night for Rittich, who conceded four on 20 shots.<\/p>\n
But overall, an unimpressive afternoon for the whole squad. Everyone was on for at least one goal against except Adam Boqvist.<\/p>\n
If there was any bright spot, it\u2019s that Horvat returned and looked healthy while logging over 19 minutes.<\/p>\n
The Isles are in Philly for a meeting on Tuesday. The Flyers are just two points behind (as are the Leafs, and New Jersey one point behind them), and the Isles\u2019 current run of form is not so hot. They survived the seven-game road trip at .500-ish, but two of their wins were absolute Sorokin Stole-it shows while their defeats left a lot to be desired.<\/p>\n
They\u2019ve been riding in playoff position for a while now, but in the congested East they\u2019ll drop back to the outside if they don\u2019t pile up some wins on this pre-Olympic stretch.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Islanders returned home and fell to the surging Sabres in what evolved into a 5-0 blowout after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":426566,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5110],"tags":[5,122,3328,159,28169,5190,5189,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-426565","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-islanders","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-islanders","10":"tag-new-york","11":"tag-new-york-islanders","12":"tag-new-york-islanders-game-recaps","13":"tag-newyork","14":"tag-newyorkislanders","15":"tag-nhl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/115953138699269821","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=426565"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426565\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/426566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=426565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=426565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=426565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}