NEW YORK, NY — Bo Horvat, who has quickly become the voice of frankness within the New York Islanders locker room, could not have been more unenthused with his team’s effort level down the stretch of their 5-2 loss on Sunday to the cross-town rival Rangers.
“I mean, clearly not [enough of a push]. They took it to us and we definitely didn’t have enough pushback. At this stage of the season, we need to have a lot better push than that to beat those guys.”
Horvat practically put his team on his back throughout the first 25 minutes at Madison Square Garden — opening the scoring with a shorthanded, tough-angled one-timer in the first period before powering his way through Rangers forward Barclay Goodrow to slot home a rebound to tie the game at two apiece.
The score was tied against the high-powered Rangers for all of 1:06 when Jonny Brodzinski deflected a K’Andre Miller shot with 4:59 to go in the second period to put the Blueshirts in front for good.
The Islanders’ third-period push was tame and the first-place Rangers tacked on two more.
“I saw a team that played better than us today,” Islanders head coach Patrick Roy said. “They managed the puck much better than we did, they were very fast on transition. I thought they had more energy than us for some reason.”
After a six-game win streak got them back into an Eastern Conference Wild Card spot, the Islanders have lost four straight to drop back out of the playoff picture with 15 games left to play.
In theory, that’s more than enough time to get back into the postseason. They started Sunday afternoon just one point back of the Detroit Red Wings for that last wild-card spot and three points behind the Philadelphia Flyers for third place in the Metropolitan Division with a game in hand.
The consistency is clearly lacking, though, hence the streakiness of the Islanders.
“The crazy part is we know what we can do when we’re on,” Horvat said. “We’ve beaten some really good teams this year and played some really good hockey. Right now we’re in a little bit of a lull that can’t happen. We have to figure that out soon or else we’re going to be in trouble down the stretch. It’s up to us in this room to rally behind each other. We know what we’re capable of.”
Getting soundly beaten by their biggest rival is a harsh reminder of the level they need to notch their game back up to.
“We’re all veterans in here,” winger Kyle Palmieri said. “We know the level we need to be at, the level we’re capable of being at. We’ve proved that for stretches this year. It’s just up to us to get back to that and get this thing going in the right direction.”
