The Islanders aren’t out of the COVID-19 woods yet. Or, for that matter, the injury woods.
Kieffer Bellows joined the six that have already tested positive for the virus, adding another hit to the Isles’ lineup, but the team got some good news to go with it. Anthony Beauvillier’s test that kept him out of Saturday’s game was a false positive.
Any positives from Beauvillier’s return to the lineup were erased in the second period Sunday, when Brock Nelson didn’t return to the bench. He missed the rest of the 3-0 loss to the Maple Leafs with what coach Barry Trotz called a lower-body injury.
Josh Bailey, Anders Lee, Ross Johnston, Adam Pelech and Andy Greene are all in protocol, the latter two going in after test results on Saturday. Ryan Pulock is also out for four to six weeks with an injury. So Bellows’ positive test and Nelson’s injury makes it eight players who are out, with six needing consecutive negative tests to return.
Nelson leads the Islanders in goals with nine.
“It’s been asked of me several times privately, all the years that you’ve been in the business have you ever experienced this? It’s without thought, no,” general manager Lou Lamoriello said before the game. “And what you do is just make sure you stay calm through it, look at all the options that you possibly have and only deal with the things that you have control over.
“The NHL controls whether the game is played or not played, so we don’t get involved … They have a record of how many players we have so I trust them that they’ll make the right decision as far as the game [being] played or not played.”
Since Beauvillier was back, the team didn’t need to make any call-ups from Bridgeport. It was thought earlier in the day that Anatoli Golyshev, who was pulled from the AHL team’s lineup, could be playing for the Islanders Sunday night, but the false positive made that unnecessary.
The Islanders finally broke a dry spell on the power play Saturday, with Nelson getting them on the board for the first time in the month of November at five-on-four. But that success had as much to do with the six tries Calgary gave the Islanders as anything else, and the team failed to convert on three power-play tries against Toronto.
The Maple Leafs also scored a shorthanded goal — the third the Isles have allowed this season. On the bright side, the penalty kill was clinical, denying Toronto clean zone entries on each of their three tries on the man-advantage.
But when the Isles went on the power play themselves, they couldn’t get anything going.
“Lot of times it’s execution and effort,” Trotz said. “And if one of those two things are failing then you get bad results. … Tonight we didn’t generate much, we didn’t have the execution.”
Josh Bailey remains in Florida, having tested positive when the team was on the road there last week.