COLUMBUS, Ohio — Mat Barzal said Tuesday that it felt like the Islanders were playing out the same script night after night.This one wasn’t quite the same as against Anaheim.But it will feel familiar nonetheless for a team that simply has not been able to put the puck in the net this season.Rocking new lines and feeling some pressure after two straight losses, the Islanders — again — could not find anything to spark their struggling offense and dropped another winnable game, 2-0 to the Blue Jackets at Nationwide Arena.After 10 games, their record is a terrible 3-5-2, and as early as it is in the season, the Islanders need to find a way to stop the train from rolling off the tracks.It’s now four shutouts in 10 games, with the Islanders suddenly near their total number of games being shut out from a year ago (six) just a fraction of the way into the season.Like Tuesday, the Islanders will come out of this one thinking they had the better chances, and that is a fair read of this one.This, however, was a game without much free ice, where 0-0 entering the third seemed roughly accurate to how the match had gone.
The Islanders, who had already lost 1-0 twice before Wednesday, were pulling from a different script than the night before, but one they could easily read off book.The backbreaking moment came 5:43 into the third with a cross-crease feed from Damon Severson.In a cruel twist, the puck caromed off the skate of Ryan Pulock before finding the back of the net, putting the Islanders in a 1-0 hole that might as well have been 6-0.There was plenty of time left for the Islanders to push for the tying goal, but that push never really came, with the game flow looking pretty much the same at 1-0 as it did at 0-0.
The Blue Jackets formalized the win on Justin Danforth’s empty-netter soon after Semyon Varlamov was pulled.Try as they might, the Islanders are running into a wall on offense at the moment.After Patrick Roy spent the second and third periods Tuesday n...