Islanders brutal offensive slog only gets worse in latest shutout loss

Life without Anthony Duclair in 2024 looks a lot like life without Anthony Duclair in 2023 for the Islanders.Which is to say, it might be a slog around here for the time being.The Islanders had stretches of this 1-0 loss to the Red Wings they could build on, whole periods they could point to as a model for how they want to play.Defensively it was in no small part an excellent night, giving up just 10 shots on goal.But you can’t win without scoring goals.And the Islanders, in their first game after Duclair went down injured, looked like a team that is going to struggle to score goals.

Come to think of it, that’s how they looked in two of five games with Duclair, so maybe his absence is not quite the problem.Neither, really, is puck possession — which the Islanders had in droves on Tuesday.For all that possession, the Islanders had just two high-danger chances at five-on-five through 40 minutes on Tuesday, and the third period looked much the same.It’s the third game in six that the Isles have been shut out, and though the Isles have never been described as a high-end offensive team in recent years, it took until Jan.15 for them to put up that many zeroes last season.Some of that, they can argue not entirely unfairly, is down to bad luck.

But with or without Duclair, the Islanders are not doing enough to put the puck in the net right now.There is not enough traffic in front, not enough forcing the goalie to move side-to-side, not enough deflections, tips or rebounds.Alex Lyon made 29 saves on Tuesday and had to work hard for few of them.Patrick Kane’s opening goal 8:54 into the evening, one of the only high-danger chances Detroit had over 60 minutes, should not have been enough to win this game.But it was.The opening gambit of putting Simon Holmstrom on the top line with Mat Barzal and Bo Horvat went much the same way as that move has in the past, with Holmstrom ceding too much to his linemates, looking unwilling to keep the puck on his stick or shoot it ...