CALGARY, Alberta — The Islanders ought to be heading back over the border with three wins in four games so far on this trip, thrilled not just with how they’re playing, but with the results they’re getting.
Instead, they are flying to Detroit looking to salvage a 2-1-2 record out of this five-game trip, wondering how they just let two straight games slip through their fingers after not just leading in the third period, but feeling that they were the better team.
That feeling is nothing new, so at least in one sense, Tuesday’s 2-1 shootout loss to the Flames was not a surprise.
For a second straight game — and for what already feels like the umpteenth time in 19 games this season — the Islanders played with their food, failed to put their foot down on a lead and paid the price as Andrei Kuzmenko scored the winner for Calgary in the shootout.
Unlike two days prior in Seattle, the Islanders didn’t dominate much of the game, but in a low-event match, they went into the third holding a 1-0 lead and playing sound hockey in front of Semyon Varlamov.
But it’s hard to win games 1-0 in this league, and the Islanders were reminded of that to their own detriment.
They finally did get some offensive pressure early in the third, but after Calgary netminder Dustin Wolf made several stops in a row, the worm started to turn against the Islanders when Scott Mayfield committed a tripping penalty 6:32 into the third.
Rasmus Andersson converted a power-play goal at 8:18, cashing in on extended pressure that the Islanders could not generate on either of their five-on-four chances earlier in the game to tie it at one.
That was enough to send it to overtime, with both teams trading grade-A chances late in regulation.
Varlamov made an acrobatic save on Matthew Coronato and Nazem Kadri hit the post at three-on-three, with the Islanders getting some frustration of their own after Noah Dobson hit the crossbar following Mikael Backlund’s tripping penalty.
In the skills competition, Wolf stopped both shots he saw while Kuzmenko and Justin Kirkland both scored for Calgary to seal it.
On a night when Alexander Romanov returned to the lineup and Pierre Engvall continued his out-of-nowhere hot streak by lashing a puck past Wolf to give them the lead 1:32 into the second period, the Islanders will feel they deserved more.
Too much of this one, however, was spent on the back foot, with the Islanders repeatedly settling to flip pucks out and live another shift against a tough Calgary forecheck — and repeatedly icing the puck as a result.
For all the time they spent in their own third of the ice, the Islanders did a nice job of keeping the Flames to the outside.
They might call that the sort of game you have to play on the road, but if it sounds like the sort of moral victory they ought not be settling for, that’s because it is.
Still, this was a winnable game — just like far, far too many that have already ended up in the loss column for the Islanders this year.
