BOSTON — The Islanders saw Saturday what a championship contender looks like, and just how far away they are from being one themselves.
Maybe it wasn’t reasonable to expect the Isles to come into TD Garden and beat the league-leading Bruins just 22 hours after playing at home against the Penguins. But on Saturday, the Isles had no gas in the tank for 60 minutes, letting the Bruins embarrass them in a 6-2 defeat that was even less competitive than the scoreline suggests.
Even worse: The Islanders may be down Mathew Barzal for a pivotal game Monday in Pittsburgh after the star forward left Saturday’s game for good in the first period after a hit from Craig Smith.
If the Islanders showed some token fight in the handful of minutes before Barzal left, it quickly evaporated afterwards. Playing with ramshackle line combinations, a result of Jean-Gabriel Pageau and Josh Bailey both being out, the gap between these two teams — who could play each other in the first round should the Islanders make the playoffs — was abundantly obvious.
The Bruins were all over the Islanders, winning every battle, competing for every puck and swarming the defensive zone whenever the Isles got it on their sticks. Whether it was due to exhaustion after an emotional win Friday, the injuries, the Bruins just being better or a combination, the Islanders could not compete in this environment.
Boston led by three after a bruising and dominant first 20 minutes, and if this was a video game, the Islanders would have gladly hit the ‘Sim to end’ button after that. Just 2:19 into the game, Brad Marchand fed Jake DeBrusk down low on the power play for a tap-in goal to open the scoring. By the 10-minute mark, Nick Foligno had added a second on a shot that trickled through Semyon Varlamov’s pad, and at 17:19, Trent Frederic added a deserved third goal on a tip from Charlie McAvoy’s blast.
Leaky goaltending by Semyon Varlamov, who let in five of the first 15 shots he saw — including a few he would have wanted back — did not help.
After Foligno made it 6-1 towards the end of the second period, all five Islanders turned their backs towards the celebrating Bruins and skated towards the bench with vacant stares, consigned to playing out the last 20 minutes of a game they had no chance of winning.
No shame in losing to the Bruins, who have lost on home ice in regulation just twice this year. But the last time the Islanders played in this building, they competed hard, fought back when down and left with a well-earned point.
This was as close to a scheduled loss as the NHL could have handed the Islanders, but even so, it is the manner in which they were so handily defeated that was so alarming.
Breaking the puck out remains a recurring issue for nearly the entire defense corps, and on Saturday, Alexander Romanov and Sebastian Aho were repeatedly victimized by the Bruins’ forecheck. The Bruins passed the puck with tape-to-tape precision and decisiveness. The Islanders did so as if they had one eye closed the entire game.
It is the potential absence of Barzal, though, that could end up mattering much more than the outcome of Saturday’s match.
Barzal is not just a 51-point scorer on an Islanders team that often lacks offense. He has immediately clicked with Bo Horvat, and is regularly asked to play over 20 minutes a night.
This team is in a situation where every game is massive as they fight for their playoff lives. They cannot afford to be without Barzal on Monday in Pittsburgh, let alone for an extended period of time.
As bad a loss as this was, the Islanders will happily take it in exchange for a healthy No. 13.