Islanders salvage end of ugly road trip with win over Capitals

WASHINGTON — This week wasn’t a total loss for the Islanders.

Ugly as the end to this four-game road trip was, the Islanders will get to call it a gritty road win, as they leveraged Ilya Sorokin’s best game so far this season and Bo Horvat’s game-winning goal to beat the Capitals 3-1 on Friday night at Capital One Arena.

Mat Barzal was back in the lineup after missing Thursday’s loss as a disciplinary measure for being late to the team bus, and top prospect Cal Ritchie made his Islanders debut on Barzal’s left wing, but it didn’t do much to inject offense for the Islanders, at least at the start of the night.

They struggled to get out of their own zone, let alone generate much, against the Capitals — forcing the Islanders to fall back on Sorokin, who spent long chunks of the night bailing out his team’s miscues.

After Sorokin’s own poor start to the season, though, his ability to keep the Islanders in the game marked a crucial development, albeit one the Isles would have liked not to be so dependent on.

On a night where the Isles didn’t have much left in their legs, having played twice in the previous three days, it was a safety net, and one they desperately needed.

It was largely thanks to Sorokin that the game entered the third period tied at one, despite Washington having had the better of the chances, particularly early on.

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That was when Roy switched up his lines, putting Barzal on Horvat’s wing opposite Emil Heineman and moving Ritchie to center, between Jonathan Drouin and Kyle Palmieri.

After 40 minutes of listless hockey, that finally got the Islanders going, and Heineman fed Horvat on the rush to make it a 2-1 game 4:29 into the third.

And, despite going 0-for-5 on the power play, despite playing much of the game in their own end, and despite needing to hang onto the lead for over 15 long minutes, that turned out to be enough to walk out with two badly-needed points.

That, mostly, came down to Sorokin doing what star goalies do and stealing a game when his team did not have its best.

Barzal, fittingly after his benching 24 hours prior, sealed the game with an empty-net goal.

After a scoreless first period, Tom Wilson broke through for Washington by getting on the end of Jakob Chychrun’s rebound 4:48 into the second.

The Islanders tied it at one while shorthanded, with Simon Holmstrom feeding Jean-Gabriel Pageau. Washington challenged the goal for offside and despite it appearing that Pageau had indeed entered the zone ahead of Holmstrom, the call on the ice stood.

Ritchie, who was in the penalty box during Pageau’s goal, had an inauspicious debut. He committed a second penalty later on and looked as though he was still getting caught up to the speed of the game after his travel odyssey, though his third period was much better.

There were not many Islanders who could say they had a clean night, but Holmstrom — in addition to scoring — continued a run of solid play on the third line with Pageau and Anders Lee.

The Alexander Romanov-Tony DeAngelo pair, which had struggled before the former got hurt, has not looked much better in the two games since Romanov returned.

Overshadowing much of it, though, was Sorokin, the Islanders’ most important player, finally showing up for his team in a big way.

If this was the moment at which the goaltender put his early-season struggles behind him, then it was exactly what the Islanders needed, and exactly when they needed it.