Let's Go Blues

TEAM SNAPSHOTS
BLUES After a tough battle at historic Madison Square Garden, the Blues will play their first game at the new home of the New York Islanders on Saturday.

The team will arrive at UBS Arena with a lot to prove after falling short in a tumultuous battle with the Rangers on Wednesday. The loss snapped a four-game win streak and seven-game point streak for the Blues.

Faced with a 2-0 deficit late in the second period, the Blues started to heat up. Ryan O'Reilly, Ivan Barbashev and David Perron each scored on consecutive shots in the final 2:30 to take a 3-2 lead into the intermission.

The Rangers battled back in the third, tying the game with a goal from defenseman Patrik Nemeth. On a crucial power-play with just under 10 minutes remaining, the League's leading power-play goal scorer - Chris Kreider - broke the tie to give the Rangers the lead before an empty-netter sealed the game.

"We know they're a really good offensive team," said O'Reilly. "We got thinking a little too much instead of just skating and supporting each other. They made us pay... We'll learn from it and we'll respond, we know we have to be better in those situations."

Their battle with the Islanders will mark the third of the Blues' four-game road trip, finishing Sunday afternoon in New Jersey before a pair of home games - including a rematch with the Rangers on Thursday night.

The Blues will hang on to second place in the Central Division and third place in the Western Conference entering Saturday's daytime matchup with a record of 32-15-6 and 70 points on the season.

ISLANDERS One of the biggest stories of the New York Islanders' 2021-22 season is their move to UBS Arena after a short stint at Barclays Center in Brooklyn and 48 years at Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum on Long Island. Unable to play on home ice until mid-November due to construction, the Islanders began their season with 13 consecutive road games.

Their first win at UBS Arena came on Dec. 11 when they defeated the Devils 4-2 after seven straight losses in the new building.

The Islanders' home record moved to 10-11-4 on Thursday when they fell 4-3 to the Vancouver Canucks. Defenseman Noah Dobson struck first for New York, with Kyle Palmieri and Anthony Beauvillier adding goals in the defeat.

Mathew Barzal, the Islanders' leading point scorer, did not suit up, missing his second straight game due to a lower-body injury. Barzal won the Calder Trophy as the League's top rookie in 2017-18.

A bright spot for the Islanders has been the play of goaltender Ilya Sorokin, whose five shutouts rank second in the League while also in the Top-10 for both goals-against average (2.42) and save percentage (.922).

An 11-game losing streak over the month of November did not do the Islanders any assistance in the standings, with their 20-23-8 season record and 48 points placing them sixth in the Metropolitan Division as they prepare to host the Blues.

HEAD-TO-HEAD Six of the last 10 matchups - and each of the last three - between the Blues and Islanders have ended in overtime or a shootout. Dating back to the 2015-16 season, the Blues are 3-3-4 in the series. The Islanders will travel to St. Louis on April 9 for the second and final matchup this season.

PLAYERS TO WATCH
BLUES Jordan Kyrou, who reached 50 points in a season for the first time in his career on Wednesday night. Kyrou leads the team in points and goals (21) as the 23-year-old continues his stellar season.

ISLANDERS Brock Nelson, whose 19 goals lead the Islanders on the season. The 30-year-old forward is having one of the best goal-scoring seasons of his nine-year career with the Islanders. Nelson also scored the Islanders' first-ever goal at UBS arena this year.

BLUE NOTES
Saturday will mark Torey Krug's 100th game as a Blue... The Blues have scored on the power play in 34 of their 53 games this season and rank second overall in conversion rate at 26.5 percent; the team's single-season record is 24.6% in 1986-87... The Blues have lost two games in regulation out of 33 when keeping the opponent's power play scoreless.

When New York was mired in an 11-game losing streak in November, coach Barry Trotz mentioned the 2018-19 St. Louis Blues as evidence that the Islanders could reverse their slide and make a run at the Stanley Cup.

But the sight of the Blues on Saturday afternoon in Elmont, N.Y., will likely serve to remind the host Islanders just how far away they still are from mounting a Cinderella surge.

The Islanders were off Friday after surrendering the tying and go-ahead goals in a 45-second sequence around the midway point of the third period Thursday night in a 4-3 loss to the visiting Vancouver Canucks.

The Blues are continuing a four-game road trip after suffering a 5-3 loss to the New York Rangers on Wednesday night.

Thursday's loss marked the second straight time the Islanders squandered a third-period lead and frittered away an opportunity to gain some momentum. On Tuesday night, New York capped a five-game road trip by giving up the final three goals to the Stanley Cup-contending Colorado Avalanche in a 5-3 loss.

"There's good things in our game that you'd like," Trotz said. "But every mistake we make seems to end up in the back of our net, where last year and maybe the year before, it didn't."

New York, which made back-to-back runs to the NHL semifinals the previous two years, was a popular pick to at least play for the Stanley Cup entering the season.

But the Islanders have mostly been treading water over the last three months; they are 15-13-3 since snapping the 11-game losing streak Dec. 7. They entered the weekend 19 points behind the Washington Capitals in the race for the second Eastern Conference wild card and are running out of time to match the Blues' feat in 2018-19. St. Louis ranked last in the NHL in points in early January that season before rallying to win its first Stanley Cup.

"It's been done before," Trotz said following the seventh defeat in the losing streak, a 4-1 loss to the Rangers on Nov. 24. "A team won a Stanley Cup by being where we were at this time a few years back."

Despite Tuesday's loss, St. Louis appears well-positioned to make another run at a championship. The Blues have endured just two losing streaks since Dec. 1, a span in which they've gone 20-8-3 to move three points clear of the Minnesota Wild in the race for second place in the Central Division.

Blues center Ryan O'Reilly said he hoped the loss Tuesday -- in which the Blues led 3-2 after two periods -- would serve as a bit of a reminder of the intensity that is needed for the playoff push and beyond.

"It's a lesson for us," O'Reilly said. "I think we're a better team than them. I think we can beat them and we just didn't have the full 60 that we needed to tonight."

The Islanders and Blues didn't play one another last season, when regular season play consisted entirely of divisional games. The teams last played on Feb. 27, 2020, when Colton Parayko scored with 1:37 left in overtime to lift the host Blues to a 3-2 win.