Golden Knights lose goalie Oscar Dansk in 6-3 loss to Islanders

NEW YORK — The road can be a cruel and inhospitable place.

But for an expansion team, sometimes it can be a bit crueler.

The Golden Knights, darlings of the NHL through their first nine games, got a harsh dose of reality Monday in Brooklyn as the New York Islanders scored five unanswered goals over the final two periods and ended the Knights’ five-game winning streak with a 6-3 win at Barclays Center.

But the bigger loss was in goal as the Knights suffered the loss of another goaltender. Oscar Dansk left the game with an apparent lower-body injury after Islanders captain John Tavares scored with 5:10 left in the second period on the power play.

Dansk, who earlier in the day had been honored by the NHL as the league’s No. 2 star of the week, appeared to have lost an edge with his skate and slipped and landed awkwardly just prior to the first of Tavares’ two tallies. He was replaced by Maxime Lagace, who was seeing his first NHL action and had a rough time of it. Lagace, the fourth goalie to be used by the Knights in their 10-game existence, allowed four goals on 11 shots.

“You’ve got to be ready, that’s your job,” Lagace said. “When I saw Oscar get hurt, I knew I was going in, and I tried to focus.

“It wasn’t a perfect night. It wasn’t the start I wanted. But I’ll regroup and get ready for (Tuesday).”

The Knights planned to use Dylan Ferguson as the backup to Lagace on an emergency basis Tuesday. Ferguson, who signed a three-year entry-level contract with the team in late September, has been playing for his junior team, the Kamloops (British Columbia) Blazers in the Western Hockey League. In 13 games this season, Ferguson is 4-9 with a 4.05 goals-against average and an .878 save percentage.

Coach Gerard Gallant wished his team had played a little better in front of Lagace. The Islanders swarmed all over the Knights from midway through the second period after trailing 2-1 after the first. Tavares scored twice and Andrew Ladd, Matthew Barzal, Cal Clutterbuck and Nikolay Kulemin also scored as the Knights fell to 8-2 and began their six-game East Coast road trip on a down note.

William Karlsson scored a first-period short-handed goal, while Alex Tuch and Colin Miller scored power-play goals to account for the Knights’ scoring. But the five trips to the penalty box would lend a hand in their undoing as the Islanders went 2 of 5 on the power play while killing any momentum the Knights had.

The game might have swung early in the second period as the Knights had a 2-1 lead and were looking for more with Tavares in the penalty box for hooking. Karlsson and Jonathan Marchessault had great chances to beat Jaroslav Halak, and either of which would have made it 3-1. But they were unable to covert and the Islanders eventually caught and passed the Knights, much to the delight of the announced crowd of 11,113.

“That was a critical moment,” Gallant said. “If we convert there, it’s 3-1 and it’s probably a different game.

“But we took some bad penalties, and against a good team like that in their building you’re not going to have a lot of success when you do that.”

Gallant did not know the particulars of Dansk’s injury or whether or not he will be out for any length of time.

“We’ll see,” he said. “Right now, it’s next man up. Max came in in a tough situation, and we didn’t help him much.”

That next man is not Marc-Andre Fleury. He is on the trip with the team and continues to be monitored for the concussion he suffered Oct. 13. But he has not been cleared to return to the ice, and Gallant said he didn’t know when Fleury can return.

“He’s day-to-day. He can come back at any time, but I don’t know when that will be,” he said.

Islanders coach Doug Weight was proud of his team’s comeback, even at the expense of a goalie seeing his first NHL action.

“This is 8-2 with some really horrific breaks as well,” Weight said of the Knights. “You look at Marc-Andre and then (Malcolm) Subban, who was pitching a shutout or maybe gave up one late, then Dansk comes in and goes 3-0 and now he gets hurt. Tough scenario, but they keep battling.”

Three takeaways:

1. Running out of goalies. Oscar Dansk appeared to have fallen victim to the Barclays Center ice as he lost an edge and landed awkwardly prior to allowing John Tavares’ power play goal in the second period. Maxime Lagace was pressed into duty and became the fourth goalie to play for the Knights in their brief 10-game history. Marc-Andre Fleury is with the team but he is still undergoing treatment for his concussion and has not been cleared to return to action so he’s not an option going immediately forward. General manager George McPhee no doubt was on the phone trying to find a replacement.

2. Matthew Barzal is the real deal. The Islanders’ rookie center was a pest all night and he scored the go-ahead goal in the second period to make it 3-2. It was his third of the season.

3. Second period not so golden. The Knights came into the game as the best team in the NHL when it came to second-period goal differential at plus-13. Monday, they struggled, as they were a minus-2 after the Islanders tied it and then went ahead on Barzal’s goal. Still, plus-11 after 10 games is pretty good.

More Golden Knights: Follow all of our Golden Knights coverage online at reviewjournal.com/GoldenKnights and @HockeyinVegas on Twitter.

Contact Steve Carp at scarp@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2913. Follow @stevecarprj on Twitter.