The Islanders and Sharks were trading chances in a pond hockey Monday night when an old-time hockey game broke out. These are not very good teams, but they can be fun teams to watch, particularly with their recent top-of-the-draft picks (most of which, obviously, are on the persistently tanking Sharks side).
Fittingly, it ended in the longest shootout of the season thus far, where the first 15 attempts were stopped until Ivar Stenberg finally beat Ilya Sorokin for a Sharks shootout win, while Yaroslav
Askarov stopped all eight Isles attempts.
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The teams took turns with power play goals — one coming off a terrible call against Kyle MacLean when Macklin Celebrini fell in the neutral zone — before the gloves came off at the end of the second period with the game knotted at 2-2.
Shoves were exchanged, threats were made, and then MacLean fought Ty Dellandrea and Mitchell Chaffee fought Barclay Goodrow. Chaffee had control over Goodrow, while Dellandrea cut MacLean’s cheek open.
That set the stage for an eventful third that ignited after Victor Eklund, who had a nice power play one-time goal in a great game for him, threw a check into Kiefer Sherwood’s body, then fell on top of the Shark. The irony is that Sherwood, who wears gloves within his gloves and so cannot legally fight, picked Eklund out of a scrum at the end of the second period to demonstrate his superiority over a teenager.
Anyway, Mason Marchment, demonstrating the hockey um, intelligence that is in his DNA, initiated a scrum and started throwing ungloved punches at Eklund while the Isles teenager was tied up by, among others, the linesman. The refs procedurally called a five-minute major on Eklund so that they could review his hit on Sherwood, then decided no penalty was warranted for him but Marchment received a double-minor.
But then after the Islanders power play returned to its normal level of incompetence, the second unit took one penalty — Ondrej Palat with the lazy hook after a turnover — and then received a second one on the same play, Anthony Duclair called for tripping after the play should’ve been blowed dead when he knocked away a Sharks pass in the slot.
With great work from Ilya Sorokin, J-G Pageau, Bo Horvat and Adam Pelech, the Islanders killed off the ensuing two-minute 4-on-3. The game was still stuck at 2-2 with under 10 minutes to go.
The teams each had some half-chances the rest of the way, including an uncomfortable rush and wraparound try by Ivar Stenberg right before the horn, but overtime and then a shootout was their shared destiny. Sorokin made some nice saves in OT, and Horvat had backhand chance all alone that he sent just wide, but nothing could prevent us from the breakaway drill.
Nobody could do a damn thing in the shootout, though we had the novelty of seeing Matthew Schaefer’s first career shootout attempt, and it wasn’t so good. Sorokin and Askarov were both in a zone, so it was somewhat interesting to see the shooters try to divine a new approach that would work.
Other notes
One of the frustrating things in this game was how often the Sharks defense simply pinched down the blueline to cut off Islanders breakout passes. Again, and again, and again, with no adjustment.
Kyle Palmieri had a ton of good chances, a few that he created on his own. Coming off ACL surgery, he’s got just one goal in his last 10 games, but at least tonight he looked like more goals are near. Ah, but the less said about his unconvincing shootout approach, the better.
Up Next
Now it’s south, for games in Anaheim and L.A. on Thursday and Saturday to complete the trip.
