Anthony Duclair scores hat trick in Islanders’ destruction of Devils

Anthony Duclair has been an Islander for 17 months, and at times it has felt like much longer for all parties.

So long that it is easy now to forget that when they signed Duclair on July 1, 2024, the idea was that Duclair’s speed and scoring ability would form a lethal top line with Mathew Barzal and Bo Horvat.

Everything that’s happened since then has been hashed and rehashed plenty: Duclair’s torn groin five games into last season, his attempt to come back that ended up being too soon, coach Patrick Roy ending his year early by laying into his effort in a press conference, Duclair floating between the bottom six and being a healthy scratch for much of this season.

Tuesday marked his first game back in the lineup after two scratches; he played on the fourth line for the 10th time this season.

The game he turned in, though?

This was the Duclair the Islanders thought they were signing two summers ago, and then some.

Duclair scored a natural hat trick to lead his team to a 9-0 beatdown over a reeling Devils team at UBS Arena, tying their largest margin of victory in franchise history.

It was Duclair’s first time scoring in over a month, since Dec. 2. It was his first two-goal game as an Islander; the last one came March 5, 2024, two days before he got traded from the Sharks to the Lightning.

It was his first hat trick since Dec. 14. 2019 when he was an Ottawa Senator, and the fourth of his career.

It was the first Islander hat trick for a player who missed the previous game since Mike Bossy on Oct. 29, 1983 — also against the Devils.

Duclair’s assist on Tony DeAngelo’s late goal also allowed him to tie a career-high with four points in a game.

So out-of-nowhere was Duclair’s performance that it relegated Ilya Sorokin’s 44-save shutout — the 26th of his career to pass Chico Resch for the franchise record in his return from a lower-body injury that kept him out for the last seven games — to a secondary item.

The first two goals came in similar fashion, with Duclair holding the puck on an odd-man rush, selling the pass and beating Jacob Markstrom from the left circle.

After Barzal’s one-timer opened the Islanders’ account 1:08 into the game, Duclair had made it 3-0 by the first intermission.

At 3:29 of the second, he completed a natural hat trick when Barzal, presented a shooting lane during a long offensive zone shift with the Islanders in the midst of changing, opted to feed Duclair instead.

His one-timer from the right circle completed a natural hat trick and, for all intents and purposes, the competitive portion of the night.

The irony was that the Devils — both to that point and after it, though the latter largely as a result of score effects — dominated the run of play.

The Islanders struggled to break the puck out at times, and had Duclair not had his star turn, the story of the night would have been Ilya Sorokin looking like he didn’t miss a beat in his first game back.

Had he not been at the very top of his game, the night could have gone differently indeed.

The same could not be said of New Jersey’s Jacob Markstrom, who let in goals on two of the Islanders’ first five shots and five of their first 14 shots and was wobbly all night long.

Simon Holmstrom’s goal, the Islanders’ fifth, came after Markstrom failed to cover a puck, allowing his fellow Swede to swipe it from him and play it into the net. Markstrom, curiously, stayed in the game afterwards, and a frustrated Devils fan tossed a jersey onto the ice mid-play.

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For good measure, Markstrom let in another soft goal early in the third to Casey Cizikas off the rush and was made to finish out a woeful performance anyway. Before it ended, DeAngelo had scored the Islanders’ seventh goal, Cal Ritchie their eighth and Cizikas their ninth.

The jersey toss, more than any other moment, seemed to emulate where these two fan bases are right now.

The Islanders are riding the wave, relatively immune to the effects of their injury pileup and getting contributions from up and down the lineup. In addition to Duclair’s hat trick, Barzal had a goal and two assists on Tuesday; Ryan Pulock had two assists; Adam Pelech made play after play defensively. Jean-Gabriel Pageau, with his team up 5-0 and the second period expiring, sold out to block Luke Hughes’ shot.

The Devils have seemingly walked themselves into a crisis with the fan base booing the younger Hughes sibling one night and tossing a jersey onto the ice the next, and with a team that had Stanley Cup-contending aspirations currently on the wrong side of the playoff cutline.

The Islanders could not be further from that right now.