Wednesday's loss may have been the worst of them, though. They fell behind, 2-0, by 4:17 of the second period before finally finding their game in the final 30 minutes. And although the Devils outshot the Islanders, 38-23, including 16-5 in the third period, they could put only one shot past brilliant goaltender Rick DiPietro.

So, now the Devils are 0-4-1 in five tries against the Islanders and have managed only three points out of a possible 18 in their nine games against the Islanders and Rangers (0-2-2).

"I'm not worried about the first four. It's what we did to not win it tonight," Sutter insisted. "You can't do anything about the past. We had our chances to win tonight. Our power play didn't produce."

Zubrus swatted at it and, though DiPietro was down, he reached up to make the save with his glove, causing Zubrus to look toward the ceiling in disbelief.

"Obviously, it was a pretty good save," Zubrus said.

Then Guerin sealed it for the Isles with an empty-net goal with 58.1 seconds remaining. The Devils have scored just seven goals in their five losses to the Islanders.

"Five wins against us this year, you've got to give them credit," Devils captain Jamie Langenbrunner said. "They're finding ways to get wins and we're not."

Although the Islanders took four consecutive penalties in the final 8:25 of the second period, the Devils couldn't solve DiPietro. His best stop was a catching glove snag on Patrik Elias' wide-open shot from between the circles with 1:21 left in the period.

"I just fanned on that shot actually," Elias said. "I think that save looked better than it was."

The Devils finally broke through 7:11 into the third when Zajac deflected Gionta's slap shot from the left circle between DiPietro's pads.

NEW GLASGOW

My God Lisa where do you find this stuff?