Artemi Panarin pondered the question of whether it would feel like a homecoming of sorts to play on Long Island, and in the moment, he never really answered it.
“It’s a hard question,” he said.
Seven-and-a-half hours later came the answer, and it wasn’t to the Islanders’ liking.
Panarin doesn’t return to Madison Square Garden for four more days, but he made UBS Arena feel like his old digs on Broadway anyway, scoring twice before Brandt Clarke’s overtime winner as the Kings beat the Islanders 3-2 on Thursday night.
What made the night more frustrating for the Islanders is that there wasn’t really much of anything for them to be upset about aside from the result.
They owned the run of play, had the Kings doubled up on shots on goal throughout — and tripled up for long periods of time — and tilted the ice all night.
It’s not the first time this year they’ve lacked finishing, and it was the second of Semyon Varlamov’s three starts in which he’s looked rusty at best.
Those two things were the difference much more than Panarin, who twice beat Varlamov when the goaltender was behind the play and looked out of position.
By any meaningful statistic except for that on the scoreboard, the Islanders had the better of the night, but those two goals were enough for the Kings to hold a precarious 2-1 lead heading into the last 20 minutes.
The Islanders’ lone goal to that point had also come on a goaltending miscue, as Darcy Kuemper mishandled Victor Eklund’s power-play one-timer at 14:06 of the second.
The Islanders got painfully closer still, tying the game 7:06 into the third on Matthew Schaefer’s first goal of the season, a bullet of a wrist shot from the right circle.
That belied, though, that the third period was the visitors’ best. Even with Varlamov noticeably sharper, the Islanders couldn’t tilt the ice as much as they had and couldn’t make good on the momentum from Schaefer’s goal.
The Islanders did retain their points streak — now at five games — by getting to overtime, and no one will complain about a homestand in which they took three of four points.
But for the second time in their past four games, the Isles were left with one point thinking they could have had two.
After Bo Horvat’s shot 20 seconds into overtime, the Islanders didn’t touch the puck again before Clarke’s winner.
Mostly, this game served for the Islanders as a frustrating two points not to get on home ice, but not much of a big-picture indication of anything.
To the extent you could pinpoint any concern, it might be Varlamov. His glove side in particular has looked susceptible throughout the preseason and regular season.
His third start of the season is probably still too early to start wondering about whether two partial knee surgeries will prove too much for him to be an effective backup for the Islanders, especially given he had a .905 save percentage through the first two.
Mostly, he looks more like a player still getting up to speed after missing a serious amount of time with injury than anything.
It wasn’t all bad on Thursday either; Varlamov handled Adrian Kempe’s penalty shot and stopped 24 of 27 attempts in total on a night when he went shifts at a time without much work, so much did his club tilt the ice away from him.
Three games without a win isn’t ideal. But it’ll take more than that for the Islanders to abandon this plan, particularly given they don’t have a comfortable plan B within the organization anyway.
This was a frustrating way to lose. It wasn’t a particularly indicting one.
