The New York Islanders lost Friday night to a team near the bottom of the standings playing much freer after a major personnel move.
The Islanders hope history doesn’t repeat itself Saturday, when they will to salvage the second game of a back-to-back set when they visit the Buffalo Sabres in a battle of Eastern Conference rivals.
The Islanders never led Friday in a 4-1 loss to the Vancouver Canucks in Elmont, N.Y. The host Sabres, meanwhile, earned their fourth straight victory, 5-3 over the Philadelphia Flyers.
The loss was the second straight for the Islanders, who vaulted into second place in the Metropolitan Division by winning six of seven games before Tuesday’s 3-2 loss to the Detroit Red Wings.
New York squandered an early 5-on-3 power play and fell behind 3-0 in the first period against the Canucks, who climbed out of the Pacific Division basement by improving to 3-0 since trading captain and leading scorer Quinn Hughes to the Minnesota Wild on Dec. 13.
The Islanders were outshot 30-23 as they continued to struggle offensively with an undermanned lineup.
Center Bo Horvat, who leads New York with 19 goals and 31 points, missed his third straight game with a left ankle injury and wasn’t expected to travel to Buffalo. Right winger Kyle Palmieri (left knee) and defenseman Alexander Romanov (right shoulder) are out for the regular season with injuries suffered last month.
“I feel like we’re looking for a perfect play too much,” Islanders coach Patrick Roy said. “Some nights, when we don’t have the same execution, you’ve got to find a different way to score goals. We were still trying those perfect plays.”
The Sabres, who have missed the playoffs in each of the last 14 seasons and are in last place in the Atlantic Division and are next-to-last in the Eastern Conference, shifted in a different direction last Monday, when general manager Kevyn Adams was fired and replaced by senior adviser Jarmo Kekalainen.
Buffalo won three in a row before the change and extended its longest winning streak of the season in Kekalainen’s first game as general manager. The Sabres fell behind 2-1 shortly beyond the midway point of the second period Thursday, but Tage Thompson and Noah Ostlund scored fewer than three minutes apart to stake the hosts to a lead they’d never relinquish.
The four-game winning streak is the longest for the Sabres since a five-game run from March 30 through April 8.
“When you find that next level of desperation to try to win games, ultimately for the guy next to you, I think that’s when good things happen — when you’re paying for the group,” said Sabres goalie Alex Lyon, who has been in net for all four wins. “We have to continue to do that. Our work just doesn’t end now, so we can’t let up.”
The Sabres will be without defenseman Conor Timmins, who suffered a broken leg in the third period Thursday and is expected to miss six to eight weeks.
