Isles Drop 6th in a Row to Sens

The Islanders dropped their 6th in a row last night as they fell by a score of 4-1 to a very hot Ottawa Senators team. Jason Spezza had a goal and three assists as he led his team to victory.

The Isles lone goal came on the powerplay from Matt Moulson in the 3rd period. While the overall effort was better than the previous two games, there was still fairly disappointing aspects of the game.

The biggest thing that upset me was the team didn't appear to become "alive" until Moulson scored that goal. Early on, the Islanders got a five-minute major powerplay after Zack Smith's boarding call on Trevor Gillies. The Islanders failed to show much of anything during that powerplay. That is not good when you are going at it for five minutes, no matter how you slice it. It made it very easy for Ottawa to kill off.

Dwayne Roloson certainly had his share of gaffes in net as well as the David Hale and Spezza goals were weak and need to be stopped. You could see from the reaction of Roloson that he would agree. The first goal, which came from Sergei Gonchar was on a nice play, but both Bruno Gervais and Josh Bailey blew the assignments there. Both players seemed to have drifted over towards the right of Roloson leaving that area of the ice wide open. This is a breakdown that seems to be happening more often than not, and I see an awful lot of scrambling on the part of the Islanders to try and get back into position constantly.

Some people are relating this to the system that they team is playing, and there are some rumblings starting to surface about the status of the team. The rumblings actually started based on a Tweet from TSN's Darren Dreger:

How many more can the Isles lose before things turn sour? Not many.

This caught my eye because it got me thinking about Scott Gordon and if his job might actually be in trouble. It is no secret that this is the last year of Gordon's contract and that he and the team had some high expectations for this season. I won't get too into details now, but firing him would be the wrong move. We really don't know what we have in some of the young guys here, and the rest of the team has been sub par for various reasons. I'm planning to write more about this subject later, but for the time being I just wanted to throw it out there.

The Isles now turn their attention to the Philadelphia Flyers once again as they look to avenge the 6-1 drubbing that was handed to them last Saturday. Should be an interesting one. If they lose again and the skid hits seven, then you can be sure the rumblings will begin to enter the insane range.

-CH

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