Islanders meagerly fall to Capitals as momentum plummets without Kyle Palmieri

Just 10 days ago, the Islanders were riding a wave of momentum, the ceiling on their season looking higher than anyone had realized.

Since then it has gone down, down, down, with things seemingly getting worse by the day.

By the end of Sunday afternoon, they had a fourth loss in five games, 4-1 to the Capitals in a game that all but confirmed that, yes, this is going to be much harder without Kyle Palmieri in the fold after the winger tore his ACL.

It’s not that the Islanders weren’t competitive; it was quite the opposite in a game where they nearly doubled Washington’s shot count and Caps netminder Logan Thompson was the best player on either side.

“We did everything right,” coach Patrick Roy said. “We had a lot of shots, we had a lot of chances, we came up short. We could find excuses — I get it, the standard of our team is to win hockey games and do the right thing. Sometimes you need to just continue to play the way we are and believe that things will go on our way.”

If he wasn’t right in the literal sense, he was certainly right in spirit.