PITTSBURGH — Just how bad is the Islanders’ penalty kill right now?
Bad enough that even the unluckiest of goals at four-on-five, like Philip Tomasino’s shot that deflected in on Sunday for a goal credited to Evgeni Malkin, feels like a hollow excuse.
“There’s nothing we can do when a guy shoots six feet wide and hits our pants and go in,” an exasperated Patrick Roy said after the Isles lost 3-2 to the Penguins. “There’s no structure [for that].”
No, but there is, surely, a structure to prevent the Islanders from allowing over a goal per game on the penalty kill as they have done for the past month, with 15 power-play goals allowed in their past 14 contests dating back to Nov. 29.
Hadfield, Ratelle and Gilbert, it is not.
But GAG PK is an appropriate name — in more ways than one.
The first beneficiary on Sunday was the same player it had been less than 24 hours prior, as Michael Bunting was left uncovered in the crease to finish off Sidney Crosby’s feed from behind the net at 1:36 of the second.
Malkin made it a daily double at 6:57 of the third, making it 3-0 with the eventual game-winner two seconds before Kyle MacLean’s cross-checking penalty was set to expire.
When it rains, it pours.
“We’ve made some changes, some key points,” Jean-Gabriel Pageau told The Post. “I think everyone’s on the same page right now, which helps a lot. That second one they got, I thought we played it well. … The power play will get some goals sometimes. Tonight it made a difference, that bounce.”
Not only do the Islanders have to deal with the embarrassment of rarely going a game without allowing a goal on the penalty kill, but they are on a historically bad pace at four-on-five, entering Sunday with the worst PK since the NHL started keeping percentages in 1977-78, at 64.9 percent.
That comes just one season after the 2023-24 Islanders had a 71.5-percent mark, which currently ranks as the 13th-worst ever, resulting in the dismissal of assistant coach Doug Houda and the hiring of Tommy Albelin to help run the PK.
Certainly it did not cross anybody’s mind that the Islanders would somehow get even worse at four-on-five.
Somehow, though, that is just what’s happened.
Max Tsyplakov started the game on the fourth line after being demoted from the second line during Saturday’s win but later returned to his usual spot.
