Here was a game that looked straightforward, except to this year’s Islanders there is no such thing.
One of the traits that has defined these Islanders through 24 games is that they are the George Costanzas of the NHL, always doing the opposite.
So you get a successful road trip with two impressive wins, and then you get Tuesday — where the Islanders face-planted at home against the woeful Sharks by a 5-4 score in overtime on William Eklund’s winner following a disastrous collapse.
And while those wins came in spite of lopsided shot counts the other way, this loss came despite a game flow that the Islanders largely dominated.
The one part of this that was familiar: the collapse came in the third period.
The part that wasn’t: It came after the Islanders seemed to assert full control of the game, extending their lead from 2-1 to 4-1.
Kevin Labanc made it 4-2 at the 11:55 mark, deflecting Nikita Okhotiuk’s shot from the left point. And that is where the trouble started.
Tomas Hertl cleaned up the garbage on Fabian Zetterlund’s rebound with 3:11 to go in the game, and that is where things started to feel all too familiar.
And with 1:30 to go, it was Hertl again at the back post from Eklund and the Sharks jumping up and down in celebration and the Islanders stunned that the same thing could be playing out again.
They were booed off the ice at the end of regulation, but it was the sound of disbelief when the Islanders exited the ice after an overtime where they hit iron twice.
Until Labanc’s goal, things were going to plan.
Even a Casey Cizikas penalty early in the third — the sort of thing that has traditionally been a precursor to collapse for the Islanders — was met only with a ferociously aggressive penalty kill.
Simon Holmstrom, out of gas as the power play expired, managed to get up the ice, recover a puck and feed Mike Reilly with pinpoint accuracy for Reilly’s first goal as an Islander, which came one second before the teams hit even strength.
That gave the Islanders the 3-1 lead they had spent much of the second period searching for, and a bit of comfort in the game. It was Holmstrom’s second assist of the night.
A pair of San Jose penalties minutes later set the Islanders up to make the rest of the game a formality. The Sharks managed to kill off 52 seconds of a five-on-three after Hertl tripped Brock Nelson.
But they could not stop the Islanders from scoring at five-on-four, with Ryan Pulock rocketing in a one-timer to make it 4-1 at 8:27.
From early on, this looked like a game in which the Islanders might just go and take care of business.
They dominated the first 20 minutes, holding the puck below the hashes, generating an effective forecheck and sustaining offensive-zone pressure, with Julien Gauthier getting them on the board after finishing Holmstrom’s feed to the left circle at 9:28.
Hertl would strike back for San Jose with a wicked release of his own from the slot at 12:19, but that was just one of six shots for the Sharks in the opening 20 minutes.
Even when the power play looked as though it was struggling on its first opportunity of the night, taking over a minute to generate a clean entry, there was Nelson to beat Kaapo Kahkonen clean from the right circle six seconds before the game went back to even strength. That put the Islanders back into a 2-1 lead 5:27 into the second.
Surely it was clear where this game was going, which meant that surely it was anything but.
It is too early to be monitoring rises and falls in the standings on a nightly basis, but dropping points at home to San Jose is the sort of thing that — at minimum — will put the Islanders in the sort of position they found themselves last year, needing an excellent last two months along with some help to make the playoffs.
It wipes out a lot of the good — and the goodwill — that they generated by beating the Hurricanes and Panthers, while getting a six-game homestand off to the wrong sort of start.
Next time, maybe they should try ordering chicken salad on rye.