Three takeaways from the Islanders' loss to the Buffalo Sabres

To be kind, the messages were mixed.

Bo Horvat, immediately after the Islanders were thoroughly outclassed by the Sabres, 7-1, at UBS Arena on Monday night, used the words “embarrassed,” “unacceptable,” and “inexcusable” to describe both he and his team’s collective mindset and the way they played.

About 10 minutes later, in the press conference room a few yards down the hallway from the home dressing room, a preternaturally calm Patrick Roy was attempting to explain that the final score did not reflect, in his view, all that his team accomplished on the ice.

“Am I surprised to see the score like this? Yeah,” Roy said. “I mean I don’t think we were as bad as the score. It showed we had 78 shots toward their net. I mean, 28 or 29 of them hit the net. We did some good stuff.”

And yet, as the Islanders (13-15-7) enter the NHL’s Holiday pause, they reside in eighth place in the eight-team Metropolitan Division, 13th in the Eastern Conference, and 24th overall.

None of which went unnoticed by the announced 17,255 fans who, when they were not booing the home team, were thunderously demanding the firing of team president and general manager Lou Lamoriello.

Here are the three takeaways from the loss:

Isles were inefficient

Roy is right. The Islanders did finish with advantages in shots on goal (28-25) and shot attempts (78-44). Those are positives. The negatives are that Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen only had to make one truly difficult stop – a snazzy glove save on Jean-Gabriel Pageau’s shorthanded, two-on-one chance – with 4:10 left in the first period.

Even more concerning is that for all of their glittering analytical statistics, the Islanders generated five high-danger chances while allowing eight.

“We should be embarrassed that we came out like that,” Horvat said. “Especially at home in front of our fans.”

Home ice disadvantage

Want to know just how uniformly awful the loss to the league-worst Sabres was? Legendary Islanders statistician Eric Hornick wrote that it was the first time in franchise history that the Islanders were outscored by multiple goals in each period of a home game.

Not great.

Which describes their record on home ice. Following the loss, the Islanders are now 6-8-2 at UBS Arena. To put it in perspective, they have banked 14 out of a possible 32 points at home while earning 19 out of a possible 38 away from Elmont.

Bad special teams

Once the season resumes, the Islanders will have 47 games in slightly more than three months to try to make up ground if they are to qualify for a Stanley Cup playoff berth. It would be somewhat beneficial to their cause if the power play and penalty kill units actively contributed in the process of winning games. The Islanders are last in the NHL in power play conversion percentage (12%) and successful penalty kill percentage (64.4%). Against the Sabres, the Islanders were 0-1 on the man advantage and yielded a man-up goal on three power plays against.

“Nights like this you have to find a way to kill those [power plays against],” Roy said. “It will play against you at some point. Tonight it did.”