Islanders coach Lane Lambert has one punishment tool: Limiting ice time

SEATTLE — The hammer Lane Lambert wields as coach is limiting playing time. He made that clear before his struggling Islanders lost 4-3 in an eight-round shootout to the Kraken on Thursday night at Climate Pledge Arena in which the team continued to take untimely penalties as its slide reached 0-4-3.

The question is whether he starts holding his top players more accountable.

“The biggest tool a coach has is ice time,” Lambert said. “I don’t think there’s any other consideration you can have at this point in time the way it’s going.”

Yet Lambert said shortening his bench on Thursday night was not possible with the team playing on back-to-back nights.

But he did say he feels very responsible for the faltering penalty kill, which has allowed three power-play goals in consecutive games and seven so far in the first three games of this four-game road trip.

“Obviously when our team isn’t winning, I feel a responsibility,” Lambert said. “But, at the same time, we all feel it together. We’re in it together. Right now, the responsibility of shoring up the penalty kill is one of the biggest ones that I feel.”

Lambert did bench Pierre Engvall for a shift after his costly turnover led to a goal in the Islanders’ 4-2 loss to the Wild at UBS Arena on Nov. 7, then made the top-six left wing a healthy scratch for the next game, a 5-2 loss in Boston two days later.

But, up front, the only change Lambert could make on Thursday was inserting Hudson Fasching after two games as a healthy scratch because Matt Martin (upper body) and Julien Gauthier (illness) were both unavailable to play.

Martin’s rough trip continued after he logged a team-low 7:11 against the Canucks. He was a healthy scratch for the first time this season in the trip-opening 4-1 loss in Edmonton on Monday.

Gauthier has played just twice this season.

Rookie Samuel Bolduc, whose playing time this season has come only when one of the top six veterans has been injured, was a healthy scratch.

Short answer

Casey Cizikas, in his 12th season, scored his 100th career goal in the second period. But Cizikas had a quick answer when asked whether the milestone goal had any meaning for him.

“No.”

Isles files

Former Islanders center Frans Nielsen is in his second season with the Kraken as a player development consultant…The Islanders have allowed seven power-play goals in a three-game stretch for the first time since December, 2009, per team statistician Eric Hornick.

By Andrew Gross

andrew.gross@newsday.comAGrossNewsday

Andrew Gross joined Newsday in 2018 to cover the Islanders. He began reporting on the NHL in 2003 and has previously covered the Rangers and Devils. Other assignments have included the Jets, St. John’s and MLB.