ANAHEIM, Calif. — The Islanders had seven defensemen in their lineup Sunday but never came close to the kind of intensity they needed on the back end against the Ducks.
It’s been a quiet through line for much of the season, the lack of edge and physicality inherent in the Islanders’ game.
You could see it in the first period Saturday against San Jose, when Ilya Sorokin bailed them out again and again.
You could see it all night Sunday against the Ducks, when Anaheim completed a season sweep over the Islanders by a 4-1 score at the Honda Center on a night when a win would have jumped the Isles over three teams in the standings and put them within two points of a playoff spot.
Too often, the Islanders are too easy to play against.
“I thought there was a lot of things missing,” Kyle Palmieri said. “Execution, just in general, it wasn’t a good start. [Goalie Marcus Hogberg] gave us a chance to find our way and try and get back into the game. We couldn’t do it. There was definitely a few things missing.”
For a team that built its identity and success on the opposite ethos for much of the era that currently looks to be drawing to a close, this is something that must be addressed in the offseason, when more substantive change to the roster is expected to come.
For the present, the Islanders have no choice but make do with what they have, which on Sunday meant defenseman Adam Boqvist lining up as the fourth-line center with Kyle MacLean out due to illness.
Losing MacLean, a straight-line player who can bring some physical energy when he is on his game, did not help matters against Anaheim.
The young, hungry and skilled Ducks got up ice early and often against an Islanders team that never matched them with requisite physicality.
Hogberg, playing his first game since Jan. 25 after being activated from injured reserve earlier in the day, stopped 22 shots.
That included a first-period robbery on Isaac Lundeström with his right skate and a penalty shot from Jansen Harkins, but Hogberg could not keep the house from crumbling all by himself.
Quietly, the Islanders had won four of their past five going into Sunday, but the passivity on display from the jump was straight out of their blowout defeat last week at Madison Square Garden.
“A little surprised,” coach Patrick Roy said. “But you know what, in this league, you gotta play well every night if you’re gonna have a chance to win. These guys are in the battle, too, for a playoff spot. They needed that game.”
Sam Colangelo struck first for Anaheim, beating Hogberg on a free look below the right dot at 17:52 of the first after steady pressure from the Ducks.
Drew Helleson doubled the lead 14:56 into the second with a shot from the right point, where Hogberg appeared to be screened following a sequence in which Pierre Engvall — 0-for-5 at the dots in place of MacLean, with the Islanders electing not to have Boqvist take draws — lost a faceoff.
Just 43 seconds into the third, Mason McTavish extinguished any comeback hopes with a power-play goal off the rush to make it 3-0, effectively ending the competitive portion of the game before Colangelo and Tony DeAngelo traded goals later in the period.
“The problems were more managing the puck,” Roy said. “We had turnovers. This is a team where their ‘D’ are in on the rush. It’s a good rush team.”
It’s going to be an uphill battle for the Islanders in the wild-card race, and it is going to be a strange, transitional six weeks to close out the regular season with Brock Nelson gone.
While no one is giving up on the season, if the eight seed were the be-all and end-all, then Nelson would not have been traded.
Everyone should understand that.
Still, even on a back-to-back and even with a patchwork lineup, this was not a game the Islanders could afford to lose.
And losing Nelson does not account for the lack of defensive structure that was on display at times in San Jose and again in Anaheim.
Exactly what the Islanders are capable of right now is a question that will take time to answer, but surely it is more than they showed Sunday.
“Gave too many chances,” Roy said. “I think we could have had a lot better effort than that.”
