The Islanders blow the lead and cancel out Ilya Sorokin’s heroics with a loss to the Devils

A loss right out of Lane Lambert’s playbook and a game the Islanders found hard to give up just as they were getting things back on track.

It’s still five points out of six – a good three games, all things considered – for the Islanders after a 4-3 overtime loss to the Devils, which was en route to a 3-1 Isles win Everything got mixed up in the last five minutes on Saturday evening.

But it’s the two points the Islanders handed a division opponent that they need to learn from.

Because once again it was the Islanders who did everything but deliver one final blow in the final five minutes of a game that was on the brink of elimination, then wondered how they could have missed it.

“We need to defend better around our net,” coach Patrick Roy said after Stefan Noesen tied the game late, redirecting a puck off Grant Hutton’s skate into the crease before Jack Hughes won it for the Devils in overtime . “They’re catching rebounds, so we’ve got to find a way to box them out, put our hands on the pucks and do it a little bit better.”

“We can’t throw these pucks away. We have to eat these pucks and swarm them. Kill the clock. If they pull the goalie, it’s the clock. It was 1:06 or [1:10]whatever it was [left] and you have to kill the clock. Don’t get rid of the puck. Eat the puck when you don’t have a game.”

Roy wants his team to become more confident in these late game situations, which have been a constant problem since last season. At the same time, however, he said he didn’t notice any change in the Islanders when Dawson Mercer cut the 3-1 lead to 3-2 with 4:27 left.

“[Was] Our ass is tight, do you think? No, not at all,” he said. “I felt great. I was confident we would win the game.”

The players also heard that when they told it. They had endured a substandard first 40 minutes and played their best hockey in the third minute to build a lead. They were on their way to their third win in a row with five regular players out of the squad – no small feat.

“I’m happy with how we reacted in the first half of the game and in the second half of the game [period] and in the third game we played really good hockey,” Casey Cizikas said. “But it burns.”

The Islanders had relied on the excellence of Ilya Sorokin in the early going, the goalie to keep them in the game when there was no forecheck to speak of and the Isles could only do their best to contain a strong Devils attack on the outside hold.

Simon Holmstrom and Hughes traded goals in the first and second periods before Dennis Cholowski broke the 1-1 barrier at 10:29 of the third period by strolling through the gap and firing Holmstrom’s shot to make it 2-1.

Brock Nelson quickly extended the lead and made it 3-1 just two minutes later by finishing off Kyle Palmieri’s shot after the rush.

It seemed as if the Islanders had survived the first two periods to find success in the third period. If anything, this seemed to be an example of how they were able to put away the late games from last season.

Not like that.

“They knew they were going to get a push,” Palmieri said. “We came out in the third and played our best stretch of the night, found a way to get up, and those are the ones where you have to find a way to protect those leads.”

After Mercer’s goal, the Devils tied the game at six-on-five when Noesen deflected the puck from Hutton and fired into the goal.

Then, 2:35 into overtime, Hughes got behind the Islanders on the rush and buried Dougie Hamilton’s shot into the net for a complete rout.

So instead of heading to Edmonton with the wind at their back and riding a three-game winning streak, the Islanders will reflect on how this game got away from them.

They got five out of six points. And it will leave a bad taste in everyone’s mouth.

“We managed to take a 3-1 lead, unfortunately we couldn’t finish,” Roy said. “They scored with an empty net. We have to find a way to finish these games.”