LONG ISLAND, N.Y. – Unable to recover after facing an early deficit, the Detroit Red Wings fell to the New York Islanders, 7-2, at UBS Arena on Wednesday night in what also was the second half of their first back-to-back set of the 2025-26 season.
“Just from the start, a lack of execution,” captain Dylan Larkin said. “A lack of showing up here, with it being on a back-to-back. We made it very easy on them, and they capitalized. Then we just chased it and let it get more and more out of hand. To a man, it wasn’t good enough tonight. We didn’t execute a back-to-back here, sticking to our strategy and making it easy, playing a simple game.”
Goalie Cam Talbot made 23 saves in his fifth appearance of the campaign for Detroit (5-3-0; 10 points), which was coming off a 4-2 loss to the Buffalo Sabres at KeyBank Center less than 24 hours prior. In the crease for New York (4-3-0; 8 points), which won its fourth straight game, goaltender David Rittich turned aside 31 shots.
“On this road trip, we haven’t done a real good job of handling [adversity],” Red Wings head coach Todd McLellan said. “That’s a huge area of growth for this team. When it doesn’t go your way, how do you respond? We didn’t start well in Buffalo last night, but we responded a little better as the night went on. Here, we didn’t start well and never got it going. Certainly, there’s the on-ice product that has to be worked on, but there’s the between-the-ears part that has to be managed as well.”
Just 2:05 into Thursday’s Eastern-Conference matchup, the Islanders lit the lamp when captain Anders Lee connected with Tony DeAngelo on a cross-ice pass and the latter snapped a shot in from the right face-off circle for an early 1-0 advantage.
New York added another odd-man rush goal at 14:56, this one scored by Emil Heineman after Bo Horvat scooped up a loose puck near the club’s blue line and raced into the offensive zone before finding him for a one-timer that made it 2-0.
Sending the Islanders ahead by three, Jean-Gabriel Pageau sped into the slot all alone and buried a pass from Lee past Talbot to push it to 3-0 at 7:25 of the second period.
“Our puck management through the neutral zone or in the offensive zone led to multiple rushes going the other way,” McLellan said. “Our sort-out coming into our end was nonexistent, really. They found the fourth man, the third man. They scored off rebounds. Areas that we worked on, tried to put time into, corrected or thought we corrected after Game 1, they showed up tonight.”
Detroit challenged for goaltender interference after Kyle Palmieri deflected Ryan Pulock’s shot into the back of the net 5:44 later, but the goal was upheld and the Islanders built a 4-0 lead. Then, with 26 seconds left in the second period, Mathew Barzal buried a wrist shot on a breakaway to make it 5-0.
On the Red Wings’ fourth power play of the night, Larkin broke Rittich’s shutout bid when he finished his own rebound for his eighth goal of the season to cut it to 5-1 at 3:11 of the third period. Larkin, who was assisted by Emmitt Finnie and Alex DeBrincat, also saw his season-opening point streak reach eight straight contests.
