Islanders blow late lead, lose overtime crusher to Predators with season on brink

NASHVILLE, Tenn.— They’re not mathematically eliminated, not quite yet, but the Islanders’ season is at the lip of the drain. Nine points back of the Canadiens with just five games left, and it looked on Tuesday night like the Islanders were painfully aware that their season is all but officially cooked. How else to explain this defense-optional, 7-6 overtime defeat to the Predators that landed at the cross-section between preseason and shinny, with a collapse in the final two minutes of regulation before Fedor Svechkov put the Islanders out of their misery in overtime? To make matters worse, the Islanders played the third period and overtime without Ilya Sorokin, who may have gotten hurt on Michael McCarron’s goal late in the second, when the Predators forward landed awkwardly on the goalie. Everyone knew and understood coming in, of course, that the chances of this game ultimately mattering were somewhere between slim and none and that even though the playoff odds don’t yet say zero, the Islanders are pretty much already playing for pride. Still, the Islanders were the team at Bridgestone Arena that started the night with playoff chances north of zero, and ended up playing down to the level of a Predators club that has long been eliminated. Yes it was close and no that was not much credit to the Islanders, whose only positive came with Simon Holmstrom’s four-point evening that saw the Swede hit 20 goals for the first time. Despite the high-scoring nature of the game, it did hold at 4-all until deep in the third, the offense finally taking a breather despite the Islanders creating chances throughout the period. Finally, one hit paydirt when Kyle Palmieri took a backhand from the left-side dot and roofed it at 15:21 of the third. The game looked essentially over a few minutes later when the Islanders followed Ryan Pulock’s hooking penalty by scoring shorthanded, Holmstrom feeding Scott Mayfield for his fourth point of the night. Before that ...