Islanders’ furious rally falls short in Patrick Roy’s Montreal homecoming
MONTREAL — Patrick Roy wanted the focus Thursday to be on his team instead of himself.
By the end of the night, some of the focus was indeed on the Islanders — but if that was a victory for Roy, it was certainly pyrrhic.
The Islanders spoiled Roy’s Montreal homecoming as they came out flat and paid the price, losing 4-3 to the Canadiens after a comeback from 3-0 down that fell short, throwing Roy into his first bout of adversity as the team’s head coach.
“Obviously we need to work on some of our mistakes,” Roy said. “We put a puck in the stands and we make a turnover. That is just killing our momentum.”
Roy’s team did erase a three-goal deficit thanks to a five-minute major in the third period, but it came at the price of losing Adam Pelech to injury.
Pelech was on the receiving end of a third-period open-ice hit from Brendan Gallagher in which the Canadiens forward left his feet and delivered an elbow to Pelech.
Gallagher received a five-minute major and an ejection for an illegal check to the head — which is of particular concern because of Pelech’s history of concussions.
“I think we all saw what happened,” Roy said. “I think the league’s gonna review the hit. That’s all I can say for now.”
The Islanders got the game to three-all during the power play, with Mat Barzal cutting the lead to 3-2 on a wrist shot at the 14:51 mark. Kyle Palmieri then cleaned up Noah Dobson’s rebound to tie the game at 16:28.
But almost immediately afterwards, they lapsed, with Sean Monahan scoring the eventual game-winner with 2:12 to go following Pierre Engvall’s turnover attempting to exit the zone — leaving the Islanders without so much as a point to show for their effort.
“Five-on-five, I thought we were the better team,” Bo Horvat said. “Obviously our power play helped us out, got us where we needed to be late. We gotta find ways to get those done. We can’t give ourselves anymore excuses. That one stings.”
Prior to that, the highest point of the night for the visitors came before the game, when Roy was given a rapturous welcome from the Montreal crowd as the Canadiens played a photo montage of his playing days during “O Canada.”
Once the puck was dropped, the problems began.
In the first period alone, the Islanders took three penalties, all of which resulted in Montreal goals.
After Hudson Fasching put the puck over the glass, Nick Suzuki put the Canadiens on the board with a net-front tap-in from Juraj Slafkovsky.
Then after the Islanders negated their own power play, with Palmieri being called for slashing following two straight odd-man rushes allowed, Engvall’s pass in the defensive zone rebounded off the wall, Sebastian Aho failed to handle the puck and it went straight to Cole Caufield, who scored.
After the four-on-four expired, Monahan scored on the power play for good measure, skating unimpeded into the slot to finish Mike Matheson’s feed.
On the road, against an inferior team, with their situation in the standings getting more urgent by the day, the Islanders came out without enough juice. Again.
The Islanders looked more like the team they want to become over the last two periods, seeing the bulk of the possession at five-on-five and forcing a 43-save effort from Sam Montembeault.
Horvat’s five-on-three goal early in the second cut the lead to 3-1 and the Islanders nearly came back from there.
But they are too deep into the season with too disadvantageous a playoff picture to be lauding themselves in a game they ultimately lost.
“They just capitalized on their chances,” Dobson said. “It’s unfortunate to go down three like that. The rest of the game we battled.”
Whatever good the Isles can take from the last 40 minutes, it is overshadowed by the first period, which ruined their chances of getting two points, and put them further behind the eight-ball on a night that wild-card rivals Tampa and Detroit took care of business.
Lane Lambert, undoubtedly, would have called the first period unacceptable. And he would have been correct.
There is promise in Roy’s system, but it has yet to fully take hold, with breakouts and turnovers still looking like problems.
But no amount of system changes are going to fix their problems if the Islanders keep falling victim to their own mistakes.
That’s how they lost a winnable game on Thursday. It wasn’t the first time.
