Takeaways: Islanders Fall 4-2 to Flames

The New York Islanders suffered their second regulation loss of their seven-game road trip, falling 4-2 to the Calgary Flames at the Scotiabank Saddledome on Saturday afternoon.

JG Pageau scored for the Islanders, but only after the Flames established a 4-0 lead. Yegor Sharangovich, Adam Klapka, Justin Kirkland and Yan Kuznetsov scored for the Flames. Anders Lee rounded out the scoring with his 300^th career goal.

David Rittich stopped 15-of-19 in the loss, while Dustin Wolf stopped 28-of-30 in the win.

“It just wasn't our best game,” said Matthew Schaefer who finished with two assists. “We could hold on to the puck a little bit more, a little bit too many turnovers for our liking, but we’ll worry about the next one and learn from this.”

With the loss, the Isles are 2-2-1 through five games on the road.

“It’s a long road trip and we still have a chance to finish it on a high note,” Tony DeAngelo said. “[We’re] .500 right now and obviously want to be better than that and still have time to do it.”

TAKEAWAYS

- The Islanders outshot the Flames 30-19 on Saturday afternoon and out-attempted Calgary 75-52. Usually, that would lead to a different result for the Islanders, who did everything, but score in a solid first period that saw them outshoot the Flames 10-4, but trail 1-0 on the strength of a Sharangovich wrister.

Perhaps things would have been different if Jonathan Drouin hadn’t been robbed by Wolf on a backdoor feed from Pageau early in the second period, but instead, Klapka made it 2-0 Flames, tipping the momentum in Calgary’s favor.

“We just didn't bear down on our chances,” Head Coach Patrick Roy said. “The second goal kind of hurt us a little bit.”

From there, the Isles were forced to open up, which led to a handful of turnovers at the Flames blue line and quality looks for Calgary. That burned the Isles on the third goal, with a two-on-one starting from the Calgary zone that ended with a Kirkland tally.

“We turned the puck over a little too much,” said DeAngelo, who had three of the Islanders’ nine credited giveaways. “We only gave up seven shots in the second, just grade-A chances we gave up. Too many turnovers in transition, but beside that we had the puck the majority of the time.”

After Kuznetsov made it 4-0 at 11:49 Pageau got the Isles on the board at the 12:21 mark, beating Wolf up high for his eighth of the season. The Isles push didn’t immediately materialize in the third period, but New York found sustained pressure after Roy pulled the goalie with 8:04 remaining. The Isles didn’t allow a shot on goal over that span, though Wolf came painfully close to his first goalie goal.

Lee gave the Isles a glimmer of hope late, but that was as close as the Isles got.

- The Islanders didn’t give the Flames a lot of chances on Saturday, but Calgary converted on the quality looks they had.

That meant a tough day for Rittich, who allowed four goals on 10 shots, marking the fourth time in 20 games Rittich had allowed four-or-more goals.

He was beat high glove on the first and fourth Flames goals by Sharangovich and Kuznetsov, respectively. Calgary’s second goal was a Klapka tip in front, with the Isles unable to move the big body from in front of the net. Rittich couldn’t be faulted Kirkland’s two-on-one tally.

The goals weren’t gimmes, but given how good Rittich has been this season, Saturday was a bit of an outlier. The former Flame is still searching for his first win in Calgary as a visitor, dropping to 0-3-0.

- Lee netted his 300^th career goal on Saturday, squeaking a short side wrister between Wolf and the post from a sharp angle. Lee became the fifth player in team history to score 300 goals – and snapped a nine-game goal drought in the process. Lee had a team-high five shots on goal and 11 total shot attempts. Roy said he thinks the sharp-angled goal can be a confidence builder for the captain.

- The Isles were credited with 29 missed shots on Saturday and 16 attempts that were blocked.

“I thought we had a lot of opportunities going towards the net, not all of them got through,” Casey Cizikas said. “You have to credit a team when they're willing to block like that.”

NEXT GAME

The Islanders wrap up the Western Canada portion of their road trip on Monday night in Vancouver. Puck drop is at 10 PM ET.