Some nights, a team makes early mistakes that aren’t costly, and they settle down to make a game of it. Other nights, every early mistake ends up in the net, and the game is lost before the first intermission.
The latter was the case Tuesday in Florida, where everything went wrong in the Islanders’ first period, and even when Ilya Sorokin would bail them out with a crazy save, no one would pick up the garbage. It was 4-0 by the end of the first period, and our minds moved on to Saturday’s home opener. By the time things were signed and sealed, it was a 6-1 loss to the Panthers — a rude follow-up to their 5-1 loss in Sunrise on the opening weekend of the season.