SEATTLE — The Islanders can’t appear to stop taking penalties, but Anders Lee feels they’re doing the proper things and getting sent to the box anyway.
“You guys have seen how they’re calling these items,” Lee said following the Islanders’ 4-3 shootout loss to the Kraken wherein all three of the goals they allowed in regulation got here on the penalty kill. “Some are battles they usually’re calling them. Some are penalties and it’s what it’s. You’ll be able to go on the market and play hard, control [what you can].
“Nobody’s going on the market attempting to be dumb. Right away it’s just ending up at the back of our net.”
It is just not the primary time this season Lee has mentioned feeling like officials are calling things more tightly.
But it surely is costing the Islanders otherwise now that they’ve lost seven games in a row, thanks in no small part to each premature penalties and a penalty kill that appears sapped of confidence.
“You take a look at like, Scotty [Mayfield], he’s boxing out in front. Stick breaks. What do you do about that?” the Islanders captain said, referring to a primary period slashing call on Mayfield that resulted in an Alex Wennberg goal. “That’s his job. It happens to me 20 times a game. My stick doesn’t break, there’s no penalty.
“Guy’s in the midst of a battle. You’ll be able to’t fault him for that. He’s doing his job and also you get a foul break.”
Bad breaks or not, the Islanders have now allowed goals on 10 of their last 17 penalty kills. And it has directly cost all of them three games to date on this road trip.
“At times I feel there’s perhaps been like that,” Noah Dobson said, informed of Lee’s take. “But additionally there’s times where we will control stick penalties. Stuff like that, we got to have more discipline. We got to pay attention to our sticks at times.
“Often earlier on within the yr there’s loads more power plays in comparison with later within the yr. We got to pay attention to that and we got to simply discover a strategy to keep our discipline and go from there.”
Lee’s first period goal broke a scoreless streak that had reached 10 games and marked his first point of the season on the ability play.
Matt Martin was out of the lineup with what Lambert deemed an upper-body tweak.
Hudson Fasching drew in on the fourth line with Casey Cizikas and Cal Clutterbuck.
