New York Islanders vs Colorado Avalanche Postgame Recap, Reaction, Highlights | 11/16/25

New York Islanders vs Colorado Avalanche Postgame Recap, Reaction, Highlights | 11/16/25

[Music] You’re listening to Up the Turnpike with host Mitch Anderson, Mattal. [Music] Hello and welcome to the Up the Turnpike postgame show. What is going on? Matt Ori alongside Mitch Anderson. Mitch, how’s it going, my friend? It’s going all right. Uh still red in the eye. I can tell like I didn’t catch a redeye flight, but I did stay up to watch the entire game. So, time for a cup of inspiration this morning. How about you? Yeah, a little uh delayed post game. This has kind of been the the trend. Uh unfortunately, another trend ended though. The Islanders win streak comes to a close in Colorado. Uh not crazy surprising. I do think and we were kind of talking about this before we actually hit the record button. I do think the the final score slightly misleading. I think the Islanders were in this game more than a 4-1 game would indicate. 100%. This was not a 4-1 game. Not even close. So, uh, they could have at least pushed for overtime in this game, which doesn’t sound plausible in a 4-1 game, but it very much was the case. No, absolutely. And the Islanders actually got this thing going pretty early, just 205 into this game. Uh, Mitch Emil Heidman just can’t stop scoring goals, and I absolutely love to see it. And they don’t ask you how, they ask you how many. Um, Colorado was pissed at this one. They thought it was a kicked in goal and it very much was not. It was a deflected goal as it says um on the the the official score line. I’ll highlight it for everyone to see at home. Kind of sticks out the skate on a Tony and it redirects us demonetized. I’m sorry. You way to go at.com. Um, but they reviewed it, right? They took a look at it. They didn’t it didn’t take long before they’re like this is very much Yeah. Second game in a row that the Islanders have had kind of a controversial goal go in right. Yeah. Off the skate. Yep. Hey man, if if we they want to play soccer, I’m totally down with it. So that’s nine goals on the season for Emil Heinman. For a reminder for you at home, he had 10 goals all of last year. Uh so he has been really good. Tony D’Angelo and Kyle Pomeary pick up assists on that one. on on Heinaman. Um we all remember like last year the first part of his year he was fantastic right up until the accident, right? He’s even better than that now. In his first 18 games last year he had five points. He’s got almost double that in goals. Yeah, it’s that’s a that’s a great call out from from you and something that I wasn’t even considering because you’re right like uh he was a completely different player in the wrong way after the accident which I mean is understandable when that happens. Obviously he suffered some you know injuries during that. Um but he’s even better uh at the start of this year. Also wanted to call out it was his birthday yesterday too. So he scored on his birthday only 24 Mitch. Damn. Only 24 and has more points than Noah Dobson. Oh, here we go. Riing up riing up the folks at nine o’clock in the morning. Love it. Uh, no, people will point out rightfully so that he’s getting a lot more ice time here than he was in Montreal even at the beginning of that year. Absolutely. But the reason we we bring this up or I specifically is that Metsu Dash identified talent and identified that there was something there with Emil Heheim and wanted him as he said specifically in that no adoption trade and it it’s paying off big time. So, great eye from from our GM. The only things you can love there. Yeah, that’s that’s a great point and good call out there from you. Uh, that was the only goal of the first period. Uh, shots were even, seven apiece. Uh, just any other, you know, thoughts on the period here. Islanders played a good road game, a road period. I thought that they were going to struggle in the higher altitude. It’s which isn’t a huge difference, but it’s still a difference. Um, especially when you’ve been on the road as long as they have, but they played well. They came out well against the Colorado Avalanche, which Colorado had some speed and they were coming at them, but Sroken played well. The defense was decent. Didn’t have a bunch of dumb, you know, Romanov mistakes to start the game. So, nothing to to hate here, man. Into the second period we go. Things start to change early in the second period. Mitch, Russ Colton ends up scoring to tie up this game at one a piece. Yeah, they they just kind of tilt the ice here. Uh I think Sroken’s going to want this one back. Uh it it looked pretty soft. like great pass, great escape. He took the lane there, but that was kind of weak on Sroi. Yeah, I mean he was pretty far out at that point. You’re You bring up a valid point there. I was kind of wondering what um Puck was doing here. He kind of It feels like he gets caught in no man’s land and he uh we get Colton right blows right by him and Pel, excuse me, Pel doesn’t really get back in time. Yeah, initially I thought the pellet got a stick on it, which is why Siroken couldn’t stop it, but it’s very much a clean shot. A good call out by you with with um Ryan Pulock just not really in the right position it seems or not uh didn’t notice Ross Colton cutting through the two of them. So, good identification from the the Colorado Avalanche one. That’s kind of one you want your goalie to get, honest to God. Like, you’re going to make mistakes. It’s going to happen. It just kind of stinks that we make a defensive mistake and the goalie makes a mistake. Yeah. So, double whammy there. Unfortunately, right after that, just a minute and 20 seconds later, uh Victor Olivesson would score his sixth of the year. Yeah. Um just chaos. They’re throwing pucks towards the net, right? And they’re just creating a bunch of chaos in front of the net here and they eventually just get it to go. A good reflection there, but like come on. Yeah, it I think the visualization does a good job of showing kind of just how chaotic it was. Looks like the Islanders are just kind of running around and you know they’re throwing passes. Pedo tries to get it out. He can’t. Throws it on net. Pick gets deflected and goes in the back of the net. Yeah, Romanov and Mayfield up to that point of the game were kind of struggling as well just defensively figuring out where they needed to be. Romanov had a few hits though up until the by this point which is nice. He was getting more physical which brings out the best in him but it was not doing it up until that point in the game. He got better as it went on so obviously that physicality kind of brought the dog out of him but up until that point the two of those did not look great. Yeah, definitely not. Uh the Islanders would go to a late power play. Uh 1906 camer two minutes for hooking on Matthew Schaefer. Uh and they were unable to score uh in the final 54 seconds of the period and then that would eventually carry over into the third as well. Yeah, the power play did look good though. Honest honestly, we didn’t score on the power play spoiler in the entire game. Um I don’t know why that’s a spoiler. We scored the one goal already. Um but they they moved the puck out well. they got opportunities and so um it was a great opportunity to play your first power play unit, give them some rest with a fresh sheet of ice for another half and then put them out yet again. Um just didn’t didn’t pay off. The Scott Wedgewood was amazing. That and that was the point of me bringing that up is I was going to say is Scott Wedgewood was really good. Uh and he, you know, has kind of been that been that dude for them in Colorado this year, right? I I don’t think he was expected to be their starter, but uh he’s earned that with how he’s played recently. Yeah, Mackenzie Blackwood went out with an injury at the beginning of the year. He’s back now, but he’s kind of struggling to catch up to the moving train, but Scott Wedgwood in all of his what 34 years of age is really holding down the fort for these Colorado Avalanche, which is great because I have him in fantasy, so that’s amazing. Uh shout out to me. Um but uh he’s doing the thing and he’s just getting sometimes it’s not really pretty there. There’s one opportunity in the third period where either way Kyle Palary has a look kind of down low along the goal line almost. I I’m pretty sure it’s on the power play and Wedgewood’s kind of getting across and the top of the net is completely open and he just like throws his shoulder almost like hashik style just throws his shoulder out and he catches it. just acrobatic stuff, just desperation move and it worked. Just phenomenal to see. Yeah, it did. And there were uh Barzal had a opportunity I think in the second period to net one. Um but Horvat was frustrated with himself. He had a good look in the bumper spot and kind of shot it right into Wedgewood’s chest. It just wasn’t one of those nights for the for the offense. They just couldn’t get anything really through Wedgewood. And you got to give Wedgewood credit for that, too. Absolutely. 100%. Like he was great. Sroken, not to be outdone, there was that one stop that he made. I forget in what period it was. It was the beginning of the third. It was the beginning of the third, right, where it’s kind of down low, bounces around down low, and it’s coming across to I think it’s Niches or something. And he ends up like just like sprawling and getting a glove on it and swiping it away from him off his stick. Just phenomenal. Like I almost pulled my shoulder trying to recreate what he did live on TV. Insane. Just laying on the ice, too. It was a complete you tal you said desperation before. That’s another great example of of a desperation save for Ilia this time. Hashik back at home in check is slow clapping for sure. Yes. Loving it. Just each goalie out there doing the thing. Uh we eventually get to the point where the Islanders would pull the goalie trying to get this thing tied up and Marty Ne just finds the back of the net. They were pretty good with the the extra man for a little bit and then they just they made an extra pass here I believe. Yeah, Barzel just chucked it and right right to Marty Nichas which like a guy who’s on 100 point pace he’s going to score from there just we tried we really really tried and we pushed the pace like you can see the the Corsy at five on five over on natural stature through the middle of the third period it just skyrockets in favor of the Colorado Avalanche and then drops as we’re pushing pushing pushing we even get a power play and we keep trying to do things we even go up on a six on four on that power play in the third period and we just can’t get it to go again. Scott Wedgewood doing amazing stuff there for the Colorado Avalanche. We just couldn’t get one to go. No, definitely definitely couldn’t. And then kind of just wish the game ended 3-1 because I was saying before like just this completely plummets Elioen save percentage this goal going through. Uh but former friend of the show Brock Nelson, he gets a deflection with 16 seconds left in the game. Just garbage time goal. Uh but good on Brock just good deflection really or tip in they call it here but whatever. He’s just cutting across the ice. They throw one on that and it goes in like ah yeah it is annoying but not that annoying because we called it in the Discord. Yes. Sign up to our patron and you get access to our Discord channel and uh we called it at the beginning of the game. Brock Nelson will score and he left it late but he didn’t. He did. He made you sweat it out to the final 20 seconds of this game but he was able to get one to go. So, a 4-1 game. Not like like you said, not your standard 41 game where it’s like they were just completely outplayed for the entirety of the game. Um, you know, they they were in it until the last minute of this game. So, yeah, against the team that’s the best team in the NHL right now. They have one regulation loss. Exactly. They lost once. The best team in the league. Um, we didn’t play a 4-1 loss game. We played a very good game. I’m proud of of what they did. If this is how we lose games, then I’m totally fine with and we will. We’re going to lose 20, 30, maybe even 40 games. Who knows? But if this is how we do it, then yeah, absolutely. Sign me up, right? Which is going to happen. You know, it’s one, it’s a road trip, too. It’s not like this was the home game. They rattled off four straight wins. The streak was eventually going to come to an end. It comes to an end against Colorado, who’s a quality team. And, you know, they they played them tough for 59 minutes of this game. So, uh, when our expectations are kind of where the, you know, where they are, I I think you’re okay with how this one ended up. Absolutely. Absolutely. If they keep playing like this, they’re going to win a lot of games 100%. So, let’s take a look, Mitch, at some of the game stats here. Shots were pretty even. Islanders 29 to Colorado. Colorado’s 28. Islanders better in the faceoff dot again. 57.4% to Colorado’s 42.6. We’re going to do it. We do it every single game. Let’s take a look at JG Pou. Uh off off night for him. Only 53.3%. It it was low, but M look at Matthew Barzal’s face off percentage. They they are, I believe, quite high for him. 69.2, right? And he was taking quite a few faceoffs there. It’s not like he took three faceoffs and won three of them. Good for him. Math doesn’t work out the numbers, but he’s winning a lot of faceoffs on the forehand is what he was doing. Instead of, you know, trying to scoop it back on the backhand as as normal, he went on the forehand. He was winning quite frequently. So, maybe he’s on to something. Fingers crossed. Hopefully, if he’s going to play center, you need him to win more faceoffs. Yep. Uh power play. No team scored on the power play. Islanders 0 for four. Uh Avalanche was 0 for three. Penalty minutes 1311. There was also the Anders Lee scrap that we didn’t talk about. Yeah, that was some right there. Like they got him on a fighting major, both of them. And then they gave Andrew Lee a roughing penalty because they didn’t want to give him the game misconduct. It’s just like, well, it’s not roughing. They barely fought. There wasn’t anything there. And if you’re going to toss him a roughing, then you got to toss the other guy a rough because it wasn’t like Anders Lee chased him with the gloves off. They both said like, “We’re going to go. Let’s go.” And they both dropped the gloves. So like simultaneous fighting. What are we doing here? Yeah. Uh that was bizarre. I I didn’t understand that one either. Yeah. Thankfully, like you said, they don’t score on the power play, so it’s not a big deal, but still really shitty. Like it was some weird refereeing going on in that game. Uh hits were 19 to1 11. Colorado with more. Islanders 14 block shots to Colorado’s 11. Uh Avalanche had two more giveaways 1412. And takeaways uh Colorado has more 7 to three. So better in terms of your your unforced turnovers, not so good in terms of your forced turnovers, but pretty clean like pretty clean stuff against a quality opponent as you keep saying. So like absolutely this is an okay win in my book. Who leads the way in forwards for Ice Time? I always I’m gonna say Bill Horvat. Barzal. Yeah. God damn. Sorry. It’s It’s gonna be one of most nice. It’s one of those two. It’s really a coin flip. 2350 for Barzal. Horvat played a lot though, too. 225. Yeah. I just thought that he was going to be out there because he’s killing penalties as well. It’s only three power plays, so whatever. Uh least. Oh, it’s a low number. Yeah. Cal Richie served a penalty. He served Anders Lee’s roughing minor. So, I’m gonna go with Callum Richie, but it’s probably gonna be Sikas. It It is Sikas. 5 minutes and 37 seconds. Cal Richie wasn’t that much higher, though. 654. Yeah, they shortened the bench, right, as they’re pushing for the the equalizer late, so they don’t get a lot of ice time. I’m sure Duke is kind of the same thing. I don’t remember seeing a ton of ice uh near the end. Um, Shyamanov looked okay in his first game back, so, you know, give him time there. I was gonna say, uh, 10:33 for Shabanov. Yeah, he looked okay. Yeah, but they’re just trying to get him up to speed here. Um, that fourth line, I think there’s something there if you give him a little bit more time, but you can’t have cases. He is dragging that line down. Honest to God, unfortunately, their other option you thought would have been Maximum Siplov, and he hasn’t been much better. I know. Exactly. Right. So, it’s the better of the two evils kind of thing. So that tough, but the 537 that that number is a little jarring even though you obviously Sikas hasn’t played well. Exactly. Most ice time for defenseman I’m going to say is Matthew Schaefer. Yes, but it’s not like an astronomical number. 2140. Okay, that’s good. Um, a lot of it is going to be power play time because he got most of that two minutes as you were saying at the end of the third period and I think they got another power play late and he got most of that as well. They called a timeout so they can put him back out for the final minute type thing. Yeah. No, absolutely. Yeah. Um least I’m going to say it is um no D’Angelo. Ryan Pak really 1622 for Ryan Palak. Okay. Like I’m not saying that he deserves to be out there, right? Like he should have at least 24 minutes. I just my reasoning here for Tony D’Angelo was that because Schaefer went out and basically gobbled up two full power plays and that’s going to impact Tony D’Angelo significantly more than anything else. But apparently not. Uh 1714. So it’s not like he played a ton, but I feel like he had a pretty good split. It was Schaefer leading the way 2140, Romanov 20 minutes and 2 seconds, Mayfield 1828, Pel 1818, D’Angelo 1714, and then Pock uh 1622. Yeah, that’s I wonder why Pock was so low. Again, not saying that he deserves more ice timeline. I’m just wondering what they’re seeing. Probably that he hasn’t been fantastic throughout this year. Um, they did put Schaefer and D’Angelo together for a few shifts. So, maybe that’s it. You know what’s strange? Uh, Ryan Puck has the most shifts for any defenseman at 29, but has the least amount of ice time. Huh. Yeah, that is interesting, right? I just I was just noticing that as I was looking at the the time on ice here. I wonder how that works out in like maybe some of you who’ve played a higher levels than like pickup league that we maybe have played how that works out exactly because that that seems odd to me. You’re right. Good pickup by you. Just taking short shifts, not getting stuck out there for long amount of times. I’m that’s the that’s the only explanation that’s in my head right now. Just really responsible with that ice time. Doesn’t like Colorado and just trying to I’m only here for two seconds. I can barely breathe. Get me out of here. Ilia Sroken stopped 24 of 27, 889 save percentage. Mitch, I was frustrated because if he uh if he got out of there at 25 of 27, that would have put him at a uh 926 percentage. So that just that absolutely crushes it. Yeah. Um but still does well in terms of expected goals against um Colorado had three point well like well enough ends up in the positive barely. Uh 3.11 expected goals in all situations for Colorado. Obviously, he doesn’t let in four, he lets in only three. So, a plus one goal saved above expected for Ilio. So, he played about as expected. Yeah, he stopped what he should have stopped at least in terms of the numbers, but I would say otherwise. Yeah, you had him on that first one, but uh I fall 4-1. U not overly upset with this one. I feel like you kind of have that same vibe. Yeah, because we went into this road trip thinking if they come out of this two and five, let’s just say, not to count like ties or not, overtime losses. Um, then we’d be okay, right? Or like two, four and one, I think is what we said. As long as they come out of their 500 and does that math even work? The math doesn’t work. Doesn’t matter. Whatever. As long they come out of the the the the road trip 500, we’re happy. They’re obviously coming out of this road trip above 500. They have eight points and still have two more games to play. So, let’s freaking go, man. Yeah, I back in action tomorrow night against the Dallas Stars on the road. So, we’ll have you covered for that one. But for now, that’ll do it for us. I’m Matt Ori. He is Mitch Anderson. And we’ll catch you next time.

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