"The excitement that Blues fans felt during Friday's home opener at Scottrade Center was duplicated Saturday night, but for the other team.

The New York Islanders treated their own sellout crowd to a 5-2 triumph at Nassau Coliseum, spoiling the buzz the Blues had created the night before in their win over Nashville.

The Blues were looking to start the regular season 2-0 for the first time since 1994, but that became a pipe dream in the first period Saturday when the Islanders put up four goals.

Mike Comrie, Trent Hunter and Sean Bergenheim gave New York a 3-0 lead, and although Brad Boyes finally put the Blues on the board, the Islanders' Andy Hilbert scored a short-handed goal.

Keith Tkachuk scored a power-play goal with 12 minutes, 13 seconds left in the third period, cutting the Islanders' lead to 4-2. But the Islanders got an empty-net goal from former Blue Bill Guerin, which was assisted by another former Blue, Doug Weight, and the home team finished off the victory for goaltender Joey MacDonald.

"You've got to compete hard on the road, and we didn't compete hard enough at the start of the game," Blues coach Andy Murray said.

After arriving in New York at 3 a.m. Saturday morning, the Blues experienced a lackluster opening 20 minutes, and didn't get much assistance from goaltender Chris Mason in his first start.

"They were fired up and they came out and put a lot of pucks on net ..." Mason said. "I would probably like to do all four of those (goals) over again. It's a little different playing at home. We just weren't ready to start the game.""