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There was no late magic waiting for the Islanders on Tuesday.
Much like two nights before, this was a game in which the Islanders looked like the better team throughout, and much like two nights before, a win was on their sticks in the final 20 minutes.
Unlike the two-goal flurry in the final minute that helped them beat the Blue Jackets on Sunday, however, there was no elation to be found in the final period against the Bruins.
For the second time in a week, the Islanders fell to Boston with Marat Khusnutdinov’s shootout winner handing the Bruins a 4-3 win.
The Islanders seemed to seize the game with two hands when Matthew Schaefer, fresh out of the penalty box, fed Bo Horvat just over five minutes into the final period for a 3-2 lead.
But it was not over yet.
The Bruins tied it up with just over five minutes left in the period, with extended pressure around the Islanders’ net paying off when Marat Khusnutdinov dove on Fraser Minten’s rebound to beat Ilya Sorokin.
Charlie McAvoy’s high-stick to Jonathan Drouin gave the Islanders a power play with 1:44 to go, but they could not convert.
After an uneventful overtime, Boston made the Islanders pay in the skills competition as Jeremy Swayman stopped Drouin to seal it.
It wasn’t until after Anthony Duclair had rifled a shot from the top of the slot to put the Islanders up 1-0 at the 5:11 mark of the second that the match started to grow in animosity.
A few minutes later, Nikita Zadorov was the victim of one of the Islanders’ defining credos: no one touches Schaefer.
Zadorov dumped Schaefer below the goal line at the 9:18 mark of the second, eventually getting called for interference, and was immediately beset upon by three different Islanders who tackled him.
This is the message the Islanders are trying to send to the league in response to the target that has been placed on Schaefer’s back. The game, afterward, took a distinctly different tone as the Islanders started to impose their own physicality on Boston.
The Bruins got an opening in the form of a fortuitous bounce, when Viktor Arvidsson’s rebound deflected off Anders Lee’s skate and into the Islanders’ net. Though Horvat put the Islanders up 2-1 less than a minute later, finishing a two-on-one rush sprung by Emil Heineman, five different penalties taken by the Isles in the second period soon caught up with them.
Pavel Zacha’s power-play goal with 2:31 left in the second broke a streak of 10 straight successful PKs for the Islanders, and sent it into the third tied.
Score aside, though, the Islanders had given next to nothing through two periods: 15 shots on goal, just 11 at five-on-five, and with Sorokin looking sharp.
Indications were this was not a game they were poised to lose.
Indications, however, are not always all they are chalked up to be.
