Game 4 Insights: Islanders Can’t Close Out Caps | NYHN+

For the first 10 minutes of Game 4, it looked like the New York Islanders were on their way to sweeping the Washington Capitals in the First Round. That changed pretty quickly as the game went on.

The Islanders dropped the game 3-2 and Game 5 will take place on Thursday. Semyon Varlamov made 26 saves and Jean-Gabriel Pageau and Mat Barzal each scored for New York.

Subscribe here for daily coverage of the New York Islanders from Christian Arnold

It was the worst the Islanders have looked in the postseason this year after the Caps pulled it together.

Isles Insights

1. Special teams continue to be a major talking point in the postseason for the Islanders. It was again on Tuesday as the Islanders went 0-for-5 on the man-advantage and are 1-for-19 through the playoffs. The particularly flabbergasting part of it all was the fact that the Islanders didn’t look half bad on the power play.

The Islanders had 12 shots on net during their five power plays on Tuesday and there were a couple of near goals. Anthony Beauvillier rang a several shots off of the iron during the man-advantage for instance.

New York has a tendency to look for the perfect play during the power play, so the team tends to be hesitant to shoot at times. That wasn’t the case in Game 4.

“We put it in play a lot. We had a couple of looks,” Islanders coach Barry Trotz said. “We had the zone time, but we need production out of (the power play). Their penalty killers have held us pretty well off the score sheet for the most part this series. We’ve got to find a way to find the back of the net on the power play.

“But I thought our power play was better today than it was the other day.”

2. On the flip side, the Islanders found themselves in a similar situation as they did in Game 3 of the Qualifying Round. They were taking too many penalties against a team that can make them pay if given a lot of chances. The Capitals were given a lot of chances, particularly in the second period where four of those five opportunities on the man advantage came for the Capitals.

The Islanders Penalty kill did what they could and limited the Capitals to just one goal on those five chances. Unfortunately, that was the Alex Ovechkin power-play goal that tied the game.

3. Mat Barzal did the Islanders no favors by taking two bad penalties early in the third, with the latter of the two leading to the Ovechkin goal. First, the Islanders star forward was called for holding Lars Eller 1:29 into the second period. Then he gets booked for holding Dmitry Orlov at 3:46. Those were two bad penalties to take and helped change the course of the game.

The Capitals were able to establish the momentum. Evgeni Kuznetsov scores just seconds after the Islanders killed Barzal’s first penalty. Alex Ovechkin scores his first of two goals while Barzal is in the box moments later.

It certainly put a damper on Barzal after he had scored off an impressive give and go between Nick Leddy and himself in the first period between.

4. Part of what the Capitals did to throw the Islanders off their game was to establish their own style of physical hockey and grind the Islanders down. The Islanders did have a strong start to Game 4 — at one point holding a 16-1 edge in shot attempts in the first — but the Capitals responded after their head coach Todd Reirden called a timeout.

The pulled it together to put up nine shots in the first, they outshot the Islanders 15-7 in the second period and then limited the Islanders to just one shot through the first 14 minutes of the third. The Islanders also gave away the puck 11 times compared to the Capitals nine.

And as the third period dragged on, the Islanders for the first time all series looked as though they had been worn down. It’s something that the Islanders had often been doing to their opponents in the playoffs, but the shoe was on the other foot on Tuesday.

“They stayed on us. They stayed in the fight,” Trotz said. “They carried a lot of the play and when you spend a lot of time in your own end it’s a little more difficult.  We’ve done that to them in this series. They did it to us tonight.”

5. With the way that Game 4 ended up, there’s a reasonable assumption that some sort of lineup change could be coming for the New York Islanders. Islanders bench boss Barry Trotz did say that he would reassess and look at the tape before making any lineup decisions.

Player health will also go into any decision Trotz makes. At the moment, the status of Cal Clutterbuck is unclear after he was upended in the second period by a hit from Radko Gudas. Clutterbuck did not join the Islanders on the bench in the third period.

6. “I think our game we got away from it a little bit and they put on a press. I think our start was obviously really nice tonight and I think we just didn’t sustain that the way we needed to keep that momentum we earned and gained in that first part of that period. That’s obviously something you learn from obviously immediately as we have to deal with the loss tonight, but one you can learn from as well.” — Anders Lee