Neither the New York Islanders nor Buffalo Sabres need to be reminded how a relatively brief stretch of subpar play can impact an entire season.
The Islanders will aim to snap a losing streak while the Sabres hope to return to their winning ways Friday night, when New York visits Buffalo in a battle of Eastern Conference rivals.
The Islanders suffered their third straight loss Wednesday night, falling to the host Columbus Blue Jackets 2-0. The Sabres continued a four-game homestand Tuesday, when their three-game winning streak ended with a 5-2 loss to the Florida Panthers.
Extended skids are nothing new for the Islanders. New York’s hopes of contending for the Stanley Cup in 2021-22 were derailed by an early 11-game losing streak, a stretch in which the team was decimated by a COVID-19 outbreak.
The Islanders made the postseason in 2022-23 despite enduring a 4-8-3 January. New York returned to the playoffs last season after going 0-4-3 from Nov. 4-16 and 2-6-2 from Dec. 31 through Jan. 19, the latter of which ended with head coach Lane Lambert getting fired and being replaced by Patrick Roy.
The current losing streak is symbolic of season-long inconsistency for the Islanders, who opened 3-2-2 while scoring at least four goals four times and being shutout in the other three games.
New York hasn’t held a lead for the last 141 minutes and 44 seconds dating back to Saturday and has been limited to one goal in the last two games despite outshooting the Blue Jackets and Anaheim Ducks 67-48.
“It’s getting more and more frustrating,” Islanders center Bo Horvat said. “For us, it’s just a matter of bearing down on our chances. I don’t know what else to say or how else to put it. It’s not like we’re not getting them.”
The Sabres, whose 13-season playoff drought is the longest in NHL history, put themselves in an early hole by starting 0-3-0 and 1-4-1 under Lindy Ruff, who led Buffalo to its most recent postseason berth in 2010-11 and returned to the team for his second stint in April.
The Sabres never trailed in a three-game winning streak from Oct. 19-26, when they beat the Chicago Blackhawks, Dallas Stars and Detroit Red Wings by a combined 13-7.
But consistency eluded the Sabres on Tuesday, when the defending Stanley Cup champion Panthers scored twice in a 55-second span in the first period before Buffalo’s Jason Zucker and Rasmus Dahlin tied the score by collecting a pair of goals in a 1:52 stretch during the second.
Carter Verhaeghe scored the game-winner with 3:16 left in the period for Florida, which iced the victory with two more goals late in the third.
The loss cost the Sabres a chance to win four in a row for the first time since they put together a five-game winning streak from Jan. 19-26, 2023.
“I think it was a little sloppy overall,” Zucker said. “We showed that we can play with them and that’s a huge part of it, but we can’t be satisfied with that either. We lost the game and arguably did it to ourselves.”
