The Islanders won their second game in a row for the first time in this young season, casting aside their injury woes for a night and beating a team they probably needed to.
The 3-2 win over the Anaheim Ducks was made mostly comfortable by holding a two-goal lead for most of the game, though at 3-1 they missed a chance to finish the game with the empty net, and that nearly came back to bite them.
With under three minutes to go and a sixth attacker in effect, Alex Killorn converted a Leo Carlsson pass
— the $90 million man’s ninth assist — to cut the Isles lead to 3-2 and make things nerve wracking. The Ducks also hit the post in the dying seconds, but tragedy was averted.
[NHL Gamecenter | Game Summary | Event Summary | Natural Stat Trick]
Ilya Sorokin only needed 15 saves for the win, but some of them were critical and one of them was outstanding and led to the Isles’ first goal. The Isles went the other way, benefited from a fortunate bounce in the neutral zone, and three rejuvenated old men combined on a pretty play to open scoring at 13:39 of the first: Anthony Duclair with the nifty slip pass to J-G Pageau, who delivered a cross slot feed to Ondrej Palat, who settled a bouncing puck to beat Lukas Dostal.
Is…is Palat good again? At least for the moment, yes.
The Isles doubled their lead five minutes later. After a Matt Kessel pinch, Victor Eklund got up from losing a size mismatch battle in the corner and sprinted to the net to backhand a rebound of a point shot for his second NHL goal.
The Ducks got one back quickly from Frank Vatrano, who was back from doing a thing in Jersey, but Simon Holmstrom restored the two-goal lead before the end of the period. He tipped in a Matthew Schaefer point shot on the power play, Schaefer’s eighth assist of the season.
The second period was scoreless and low event (outside of a fight from Mitchell Chaffee in his Isles debut) the third period even less so. Pete DeBoer’s dream of a smothering, frustrating team defense may be sinking in.
Up Next
The other LA team, the one-win Kings, are in town on Thursday.
