Having lost two straight — including a 5-2 loss to the Los Angeles Kings just a night before — the Islanders’ five-game west-coast trip was turning off the rails quickly.
Rather indicative of a disastrous season, but things managed to take another turn for the worst when star center Mathew Barzal went down with a lower-body injury that held him out of Sunday’s game against the Anaheim Ducks.
It was the first game that Barzal had missed due to injury since his debut in 2017 — prompting head coach Barry Trotz to shuffle his lines up yet again this season.
Anders Lee returned to the first line on the left-wing while Brock Nelson took Barzal’s spot, flanked by Anthony Beauvillier on the right.
Kyle Palmieri and Zach Parise — both of whom were effective emergency first-linemates of Barzal of late — moved down to the second line centered by Jean-Gabriel Pageau. The youngsters of Kieffer Bellows and Oliver Wahlstrom surrounded veteran Josh Bailey on the third unit.
It worked against a Ducks team that is in the thick of the playoff hunt in the Pacific Division as the Islanders stopped their skid with a 4-0 win.
They did so with a simple message from their head coach.
“Let’s just play the game,” Trotz said. “Sometimes we try to force things that aren’t there, be too fine. Let’s just play the game right. The leadership group, they get all the credit. They stepped up.
“Our strength is in the group, not the individuals. That was on display… The guys had fun playing hockey the right way. “
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There still is no timetable on just how long Barzal will be out as Trotz prescribed a vague day-to-day label on him.
It remains to be seen if he’ll be able to go for the team’s road-trip finale — and their toughest test yet — against the best team in hockey in the Colorado Avalanche on Tuesday night.
“It goes back to being the next guy has to be ready,” defenseman Andy Greene, who scored his second goal of the season on Sunday, said. “It’s not going to be one guy to replace [him]. That’s the name of the job and we have to make sure we keep this thing going and try to get some traction.”
“We’ve been trying to get traction all year,” Trotz said looking ahead to the trip to Denver. “If it wasn’t Colorado, it was someone else. We just have to play the type of style that we played… The guys had fun doing it the right way [Sunday] and that’s the key, doing it the right way.”
