RALEIGH, N.C. — The Islanders played just well enough to believe until the moment their goal became impossible.
They bowed out of the season on Tuesday evening after scratching and clawing their way back from an early deficit before the third period did them in.
They bowed out in five games to a superior Carolina Hurricanes team, 6-3, in a game and in a series that followed the through line of the season.
Close enough to rip hearts into pieces.
They bowed out, and it might be the end of the franchise’s most successful era since the Dynasty.
“I just feel like we deserved a little bit better,” coach Patrick Roy said. “I’m not saying we should have won the series. I’m saying that we could go home and play Game 6 easily. And instead it’s over. So it just feels empty in the way that I thought we did a lot better than what we got in return.”
Individually, each game in this series was tight enough that the Islanders could believe they had a shot at pulling off an incredible comeback.
But collectively, there was an obvious conclusion: The Hurricanes are better.
They will move on to face the Rangers in the second round.
In fact, the Hurricanes were so much better in this series that they won it in five games despite playing their B-game for most of it.
But in the decisive moments of nearly every game, they were the more resilient, more desperate team.
On Tuesday, they might have just been the luckier team, but it was enough.
After the Islanders had gone down 3-1, it looked like a comeback was in the cards after Casey Cizikas tied the game at three with 22 seconds to go in the second period, taking advantage of a rare error from Frederik Andersen, who tripped and allowed Cizikas to shoot into an open net.
It took only five minutes of the third period for Carolina to take that momentum and crush it into dust.
Jack Drury broke the tie 4:36 into the third, recovering a loose puck that bounced under Jean-Gabriel Pageau’s stick and snapping it in from the left faceoff dot.
Then just eight seconds later, after the puck was rimmed around the boards following the faceoff, it took a strange hop, caught Semyon Varlamov out of position and Stefan Noesen deposited it in the net.
“Even after they scored the first one, I don’t think the belief wavered,” Kyle Palmieri said. “The second one’s just a s–tty bounce and it happens. Sometimes it’s a game of bounces.”
Seth Jarvis’ empty-netter added a sixth, but the damage was long since done.
It was the second time in the series that Carolina scored twice in under 10 seconds and both sequences included the game-winning goal.
It was also the second time Tuesday night the Islanders had fallen apart in a short span, though the first time was a long-by-comparison 3:13 to start the game when they fell down 2-0.
That pair of goals, along with Evgeny Kuznetsov’s penalty shot, made it 3-1 after a first period Carolina dominated.
But Brock Nelson’s goal off the rush 3:47 into the second allowed the Islanders to regroup, and Cizikas’ goal later in the period allowed them to believe.
Just enough to make it hurt.
“I really thought Casey’s goal, I thought that would lift us in the third,” Roy said. “A couple bad bounces and they won the game.”
Whatever the reason, the Islanders lost and the organization now needs to consider the consequences.
It’s been three seasons since the Islanders last won a playoff series, three seasons over which there is an overwhelming pile of evidence that this core is past being a Stanley Cup contender.
If general manager Lou Lamoriello keeps his job — which should not be treated as a stone-cold guarantee, though ownership allowing him to hire a full-time coach in January is a major indicator of his safety — he will have a chance to reshape the roster or recommit to a core that lost more games than it won this season before exiting quietly in the first round.
There are expiring contracts and core pieces — particularly Matt Martin and Cal Clutterbuck, the first of whom missed Tuesday’s game with a lower-body injury — who may depart.
But devotion to status quo has been paramount from the organization and it’s more than possible that the only changes made are either minor or foisted upon them in the form of retirements.
The painful question of how to go forward from here is where the conversation must turn on Wednesday morning.
For the rest of Tuesday night, the Islanders could only wallow in the pain.
