NEW YORK _ Jack Capuano called it swagger, though it came out more like "swaggah" with his Rhode Island accent. Doug Weight called it mojo on Tuesday night.
Whatever it is, the Islanders do not have it right now. A 5-1 loss to the Bruins marked the Isles' first three-game losing streak of the season and dropped them officially, if only marginally, out of an Eastern Conference playoff spot for the first time since October.
They are tied with the Hurricanes at 44 points, but Carolina has a game in hand. The Isles face three straight Metro Division opponents in a four-day span this week, so that playoff gap could be reversed or widened, depending on whether this team can recapture the swagger/mojo/whatchamacallit that drove a 15-7-2 start.
"Some guys have disappeared," Weight said after a game that was nowhere near the New Year's Eve debacle in Denver but still a lopsided affair, with the Bruins dominating zone time and the scoreboard over the final 40 minutes after a 1-1 first period. "We have to challenge them, challenge some ice times. There's only so many things you can do. But some guys have to start answering the bell on a consistent basis."
Remarkably during this three-game skid, the once-ugly goaltending has been good enough, Jaroslav Halak made 33 saves in his sixth straight start, including 16 in the second period when the Bruins rolled line after line to pin the Isles down in their own end.
Patrice Bergeron corralled a fluttering puck and batted it off Halak's leg and in at 8:28 of the second to put the Bruins in front. From then on, the Isles managed just 10 shots on Tuukka Rask, expending far too much energy chasing the game and chasing the Bruins around their own end to really pose a threat.
"It's what we want to do to other teams," Anders Lee said. "Try to suffocate them until all they can do is dump the puck out and get a change. We have to be able to grind through these games."
The Isles are still third in the league in goals per game, but they've mustered just four in the three losses. Mathew Barzal has hit a bit of a wall, though his line produced the lone goal when Jordan Eberle pounced on a turnover and beat Rask at 9:30 of the first.
