Islanders website: Has tonight's recap of the 4-0 loss to the Atlanta Thrashers.
"We're so spread out, we don't give ourselves a chance to play together," Islanders captain Bill Guerin said. "It's tough for a goalie to play 5-on-0."
"It's tough, Dubielewicz said. "It just feels like we got behind the 8-ball, and I got rattled out there a bit."
"I thought we would be ready to play," Islanders coach Ted Nolan said. "I was wrong. We just weren't prepared right from the beginning. We underestimated their team speed. They really took it to us the first 5-10 minutes of the game."
NYI Fan Central Comments:
No excuses for this kind of effort at all and it has to go on the head coach and the team captain.
Alexei Yashin were producing like Guerin the media would be all over him, just because Guerin fills the quote books he cannot get a pass for his lack of production or his failure to work to produce quality chances.
Outside of a few individual performances this team mailed it in top to bottom tonight and displayed the look of a club that simply cannot produce enough to remain competitive when they fall behind early. Kari Lehtonen barely had to break a sweat in this game with only a few descent individual shots by Bergenheim and a few chances late. Islanders played like a team finished before the puck even dropped tonight or took Atlanta for granted and when they fell behind simply played like it was over. Sutton tried to pick a fight or two, Atlanta fought him once but they did not have to bother.
That was a club that had lost three in a row against a goaltender with zero wins on the season who had just been recalled. The Islanders drew one power play until the third period and lost most of the battles for the puck in the offensive zone against a team that is weak on the defensive side. When the Islanders were not losing the battles in the offensive end of the ice handily. Atlanta was setting up behind the defense and easily could have had another three or four goals with the breakaways they were producing.
I put none of the blame on Dubie outside of the 4-0 goal. He was hung out to dry by his team. Kovalchuk made a great move on Martinek and he had no chance. After that Sutton did not have Boulton who is no scorer on a rebound, another breakaway goal against where Hilbert could not contain his man.
Dubie was solid the final two periods, had very little help and Atlanta put it into cruise control while Comrie did nothing but take retaliation penalties.
Losing is one thing, that happens. Twelve games with two goals or less and this poor an effort is a major problem. This captain makes five million dollars and he cannot create a goal for this team and looks lost on the power play outside of poor peripheral chances like he's skating in mud and this is with virtually no travel to this point.
All they can do is look to Boston and see what happens with Satan. Islanders as close as they were to first place Thursday are much closer to last place now.
Something has to give with this offense, teams are going to follow Atlanta's plan here. First period goals for this team are so few and far between it almost demands the opposition go after them early and see if they will fold.
Would have been nice to see some player interviews after this loss.
Newsday: Greg Logan had a late blog before the game and reported Shawn Bates suffered a hip injury and could be out for a while.