RALEIGH, N.C. — The Islanders’ season-long kryptonite of holding a lead had gone away for a while.
But it reared its ugly head at the worst possible moment on Monday night, as the Islanders took a 3-0 lead and turned it into a 5-3 loss to the Hurricanes to go down 2-0 in the first round of the playoffs after Carolina scored three in the last 2:30 to complete the comeback, with Jordan Martinook netting the winner.
It’s the second time the Islanders have blown a 3-0 lead against Carolina this season, but this one hurts a whole lot more than the first, all the way back on Nov. 4.
The formula was much the same as so many other heartbreaking losses the Islanders suffered this season. They got a big lead.
They sat back and tried to bleed out the rest of the game. And there was too much time on the clock for that to even have a chance of working.
The game swung almost immediately after Anders Lee put the Islanders up by three with a skillful power-play goal 3:54 into the second period.
The Islanders had gotten out to their lead by ugly means — the Hurricanes had the majority of chances to that point — but from there, they barely even left their defensive zone.
This became an onslaught to which they had no answer, with Carolina putting in shift after shift where the Islanders could not get off the ice.
Teuvo Teravainen finally broke through on the power play when Adam Pelech got caught up ice and the Islanders subsequently left the backside unguarded for Teravainen to put in Jake Guentzel’s feed off a rebound to pull within 3-1.
That was where it sat entering the third, but the tone and tenor of the night had completely shifted.
Whatever the score, Carolina had all the momentum in its own building and the Islanders would need to depend on a combination of desperate defending and Semyon Varlamov to hang on.
As well as Varlamov played, that proved to be a hard formula to execute.
And when Seth Jarvis wired a wrist shot from the left-side dot to make it 3-2, the Islanders were suddenly defending a one-goal lead with 9:17 to go.
Another bad omen appeared when Kyle MacLean’s goal on the very next shift was instantly ruled out for a high stick.
Finally, just when it looked like the Islanders might make it out alive, Sebastian Aho deflected in Andrei Svechnikov’s shot at the right post with 2:15 to go and the extra attacker on for Carolina.
Just nine seconds later, Martinook completed the collapse, beating Noah Dobson to the left post and sticking the puck in.
Jake Guentzel sealed up the game with an empty-net goal just over a minute later.
Heartbreak. Not for the first time. But certainly the worst time.
