Avoiding The Worst

Isles escape Vancouver with a 4-3 win

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Good Morning, Islanders Country.

For all the ways the Islanders have surprised this season — for all the statement wins, the resilience, the nights where they look like a team nobody wants to play — there’s one habit they just can’t seem to quit.

They play down to their competition. Stubbornly. Reliably. Almost predictably.

Lose to the Jets. Lose to the Blue Jackets. Then turn around and beat a team higher in the standings and make you think, OK, maybe this thing is real. It’s been the rhythm of their season, a maddening loop of progress and self-sabotage that keeps everyone just slightly off balance.

And of those games, Dec. 19 stands out in particular. A lackluster 4–1 loss at UBS Arena to the Vancouver Canucks — a team already wobbling, already wounded, already asking to be put out of its misery. Given the state of that opponent, it might still stand as the Islanders’ worst loss of the season. Not because of the score. Because of the message: this again?

So when the Islanders rolled into Vancouver tonight and found the Canucks sitting at the very bottom of the NHL standings, mired in a 10-game losing streak, the math felt simple. Sixth game of an up-and-down road trip. Anything other than two points would’ve been a low point that lingered.

And for a while, it looked like they were flirting with exactly that.