The good news for the Islanders is they’re the right franchise playing the right sport in the right market to be reminded that overcoming a three games to none deficit is not impossible.
The 1975 Islanders became just the second team in history to overcome a three games to none deficit when they stormed back to beat the Penguins in a quarterfinal series. Of the five teams in the four major sports leagues to mount the miraculous comeback, four are in the NHL. And the only NHL team to lose a series after going up three games to none is the most famous victim of a historic comeback — the 2004 Yankees, who were of course vanquished by the Red Sox in the AL Championship Series.
The bad news, alas, is the Islanders are down three games to none in their Eastern Conference quarterfinal series following Thursday night’s 3-2 loss to the Hurricanes and that 291 of the 295 previous teams to fall into an 0-3 hole didn’t win their next four games.
That’s a failure rate of 98.6 percent, which is a good temperature reading, at least, if not a good sign for the Islanders or the NHL’s Lightning and the NBA’s Lakers and Suns, all of whom joined the Islanders in falling into a 3-0 hole Thursday night.
As was to be expected, the Islanders spent late Thursday and Friday subscribing to the one-game-at-a-time theory — this is the one time when those words are not just cliche — and reminding themselves of the 1.4 percent of teams who have mounted the comeback.
“Just get the first one,” captain Anders Lee said Thursday night. “We’ve got to win a game before we can win four.”
“There’s been, obviously, teams that have overcome this in the past and I think we have such a resilient group here that everybody still believes we can do this,” Bo Horvat said Friday.
Resiliency has been the Islanders’ trademark throughout the most successful decade-long run since the dynasty years. Eleven players remain from the 2020 team, which mounted a surprising run to the semifinals after ending the pandemic-shortened regular season in ninth place in the Eastern Conference.
The Islanders have made the playoffs in each of the last two seasons despite endured three losing streaks of at least six games. They had two such streaks this year, including a skid in March that left them five points out of a playoff spot entering play on April 1.
The Islanders are down 0-3 despite outshooting Carolina by a combined 65-48 in Games 1 and 3. The Islanders were outshot 39-12 in Game 2, when they led 3-0 fewer than five minutes into the second period.
“Comes down to very small things throughout each game,” Lee said Friday. “We’ve come up short three times. Now there’s another level we need to get to.”
But that level is very rarely reached by teams once they fall into an 0-3 hole. The only NHL team to fall behind three games to none last season was the Hurricanes, who fell to the Panthers by one goal in each of the first three games of the Eastern Conference finals. The Panthers then earned a 4-3 win in Game 4.
“I thought we could have won Game 1 and this one,” Islanders head coach Patrick Roy said Thursday night. “Game 2, in the second half, they took it away from us. But hey, that’s the playoffs. We’ve been resilient all year. I love this group. These guys, they care and I know we’re going to come back with a big effort on Saturday.
“Unfortunately, we cannot look back. We need to look forward and try to make a comeback.”
