DALLAS — It’s not quite gut-check time for the Islanders after just two games. But that’s not too far off after 120 collective minutes of regular-season hockey over which the Islanders have rarely looked as structured and coherent as they did through much of the preseason.
Saturday’s 3-0 loss to Dallas carried over the worst aspects of Thursday’s defeat to Utah, mainly, in that it was pockmarked by sloppiness and a lack of offensive cohesion, with a few too many mistakes to make grinding out a win possible.
Worse than that, most of the positives from that 5-4 overtime loss made the four-hour flight to Dallas on a delay, waiting until the third period to take hold.
“It’s a long season,” Kyle Palmieri said. “Obviously, it’s not a dream start. It’s not what we were thinking about during camp, but here we are.”
It might be — it probably is — just early-season rust. But these games do count, the schedule is unforgiving and the Islanders are operating on a time crunch, even if it doesn’t really feel that way two games in.
A tough early schedule, with stops in Colorado and St. Louis before returning home, won’t provide much reprieve.
When Patrick Roy took over last season, one of his hallmark phrases was that the Islanders had to transition the puck as a “unit of five” — which was to say the forwards needed to be supporting the defensemen, rather than hanging out at the opposite blue line and waiting for a 100-foot pass.
These first two games have featured a lot of 100-foot passes.
There also have been moments of confusion in the defensive zone, where it doesn’t quite look as though everyone is on the same page regarding where to be.
Dallas’ first goal of the night, where Tyler Seguin got free in the slot with Bo Horvat in no man’s land, looked like a textbook example.
Then there was the puck management, a consistent problem when trying to exit the defensive zone and one that ties in directly with the two issues mentioned above.
And it, too, led to a goal against, with Max Tsyplakov’s turnover — for which Palmieri took responsibility — giving Jamie Benn a look which he converted to make it 2-0 at 10:58 of the second.
The top line, a bright spot on Thursday, didn’t look to be on the same page for far too much of Saturday.
That, in fairness, went for pretty much everybody. And so too did an inability to get inside when they were able to hold the puck in the offensive zone for any consequential period of time.
“If we can just fix our turnovers coming out of our ‘D’ zone coverage, we’ll be fine,” Roy said. “I thought we did a lot of good things.”
Holding a highly-powered Stars team to just 27 shots would be at the top of that list, and the Islanders — while not getting going offensively until it was too late — did not ever get caved in by Dallas.
But it’s hard to feel good about that when it took until the third period for them to start playing cohesively and forcing Dallas netminder Jake Oettinger to work.
Oettinger, who earned a 33-save shutout, got his glove out to deny Horvat early in the third on what was the Islanders’ best chance of the night to that point, quelling the rally before it ever really got going.
Later in the period, Horvat struck iron — ending up on the wrong end of another grade-A opportunity.
Seguin sealed the deal with an empty-net goal just before the final minute of play.
“He was making the first save,” Palmieri said of Oettinger. “I think we maybe could’ve done a little better job of getting to the second opportunities. We had a lot of shots but some of them were just kind of outside. Could’ve made it tougher on him.”
It’s early for everyone, and the Stars — Western Conference Finalists last spring — had their moments of rust and discombobulation, too.
Working through that is the name of the game in October, and if everyone is firing on all cylinders in the second half of the season and beyond, that is what matters.
The Islanders, though, let a season get away from them early on as recently as 2021-22.
And the last two years have both required late pushes to make the playoffs after the team fell in a hole during the first half of the season.
This year, the training camp mantra went, was meant to be different. So far, that’s proving to be a tough ask.
