This one was pretty rough. Tampa Bay dominated early on, but the Isles, playing hard to tie the series, were strong for the rest of the game. Unfortunately, the power play remained inert and the Isles couldn’t break Vasilevskiy enough to make up for Tampa’s ability to pounce on every Islanders mistake.
Brock Nelson opened the scoring, but the team fell asleep for 27 seconds after, and suddenly found themselves down 2-1 in the game. Just the way it seems to go this series. It wasn’t helped by the fact that Casey Cizikas has now left the bubble due to injury, meaning that the Islanders will now have to climb out of a 3-1 series hole without their fourth line center and key penalty killer.