The stakes on Wednesday night were aptly laid out by Hudson Fasching after the Islanders finished their morning skate.
“For a while, we’ve been telling ourselves, ‘Hey, we’re not out of this, we’re not out of this,’” Fasching said. “Now it’s like, all right, we’re officially in this now.”
Yes they are, and Wednesday was when the Islanders could have finally laid down a long-awaited symbolic marker in this playoff race, with the team knowing ahead of time that a win would — at least temporarily — put them above the Canadiens for the last wild-card spot in the East.
The Islanders are so close.
After Wednesday’s game, it feels like they are so far away.
The 5-2 loss to the Canucks to close a good-not-great homestand, with Ilya Sorokin getting pulled after allowing four goals on 19 shots, means that the Islanders did not get the mental boost of waking up Thursday to see themselves in a playoff spot.
More concerning, it means the Islanders have now dropped three straight games, and while two of those came in overtime, that is far from what anyone wants this time of year.
Comparatively speaking, it is of some help that every other team in the chase is going through it right now.
The Islanders are not being judged against the almighty, they are being judged against Montreal, the Rangers, Columbus and Detroit.
At an earlier point in the season, Wednesday’s loss would have been easily hand-waved.
The Islanders played well for long stretches in the first two periods of this game, they ran into a red-hot Thatcher Demko in Vancouver’s net and couldn’t recover momentum after the Canucks got things rolling.
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But this is Game 71 of the season, and no one cares if you ran into a hot goalie.
More than that, as well as Demko played, the Islanders can look to themselves for failing to find the right play on a number of odd-man rushes in this one, and for losing hold of the game after taking a 2-1 lead in the second.
In his first game at UBS since being included in the Jan. 2023 deal for Bo Horvat, Aatu Raty got things moving for Vancouver by tipping Marcus Pettersson’s shot past Ilya Sorokin to tie the game at two at 13:59 of the second.
An Islanders lapse in concentration with 23 seconds to go in the period allowed Derek Forbort a look off the rush, on which the defenseman promptly put the Canucks up 3-2 going into the third.
That was one Sorokin should have stopped. So was Teddy Blueger’s look from the left circle just 1:03 into the third — and after it went in to extend Vancouver’s lead to 4-2, Roy gave his goalie the hook.
By then, the urgency had all but left the Islanders.
There were chances to get back into this game, namely two power plays in the third period.
But the Islanders power play is going through a dreadful spell at the moment, even by the standards of the league’s 32nd-ranked group at five-on-four, and could barely cobble together zone entries — let alone start a comeback.
Shortly after the Islanders’ final unsuccessful power play, Kiefer Sherwood’s empty-netter sealed the result at 5-2.
In the opening minutes of this one, the Islanders looked like the team with the better handle on the game, but they weren’t able to capitalize on it, with Demko robbing old teammate Horvat twice in the first period.
The Islanders did answer quickly after Sherwood’s opening goal, with Casey Cizikas scoring shorthanded and Tony DeAngelo making it 2-1 by the 10-minute mark of the second period at four-on-four.
Still, the Islanders couldn’t seem to convert at five-on-five despite repeated odd-man rushes and backdoor looks.
Even with the Canucks playing without two of their top three centers, Elias Pettersson and Filip Chytil both watching this one from the West Coast, that always had the potential to come back and bite the Islanders.
That’s just what happened, and now the Islanders are flying to Florida lamenting an opportunity lost.