Isles Fall to St. Louis at Home
It was bound to end at some point. Coming off one of the best road trips in team history, the Islanders struggled to find their legs and couldn’t generate many high-danger scoring chances. In the end, it was too little, too late, as their only goal came with Ilya Sorokin pulled for an extra attacker. For the Blues, it was the perfect road game: they kept the Islanders in front of them, denied clean zone entries, and forced a steady diet of tipped and blocked passes. The Islanders, for their part, never made the adjustments needed to break through.
St. Louis opened the scoring early, as captain Brayden Schenn buried the game’s first shot in the opening minute. The Islanders eventually settled in and generated some pressure, though quality chances remained scarce on both sides. A hooking call on Mat Barzal gave the Blues a pair of high-danger looks, but Sorokin came up with two spectacular point-blank stops to keep the deficit at one. The Islanders’ penalty killers even created a shorthanded opportunity when J.G. Pageau drove the net, drawing a penalty on Justin Faulk. The period ended with the Blues holding a 1–0 lead.
New York opened the second period with just under a minute of power-play time but still couldn’t solve Jordan Binnington. The period featured long stretches of uninterrupted play but few dangerous chances. Late in the frame, Pius Suter, stationed at Sorokin’s doorstep, buried a rebound off a Dylan Holloway shot to extend the Blues’ lead to 2–0.
The Islanders struggled to generate offense until late in the third, when they pulled Sorokin with four minutes remaining. The gamble paid off when captain Anders Lee scored off a Mathew Barzal rebound from the left boards. Moments later, with Sorokin pulled again, the Islanders appeared to tie the game on a Bo Horvat shot, but the goal was immediately waved off for goaltender interference on Kyle Palmieri. It was a close call, as Palmieri appeared to be pushed into Binnington by Faulk, but head coach Patrick Roy elected not to challenge. “I don’t think we would have won the challenge,” Roy said after the game. The Islanders had benefited from a similar call earlier on the road trip in Dallas.
Though New York wound up with a four-minute power play after Jonathan Drouin was high-sticked by Faulk on the same sequence, they still couldn’t convert. With Sorokin pulled for a six-on-four advantage, the Islanders pressed but couldn’t find the equalizer, ultimately falling 2–1.