The New York Islanders followed up their gate-busting nine-goal romp over New Jersey with one measly goal against the Predators, falling 2-1 via shootout in Nashville.<\/p>\n
The outcome gives them a valuable point and keeps them in second place in the Metro (for now) as they begin their seven-game road trip, though they\u2019ll feel it was a missed opportunity to get two.<\/p>\n
Then again, though Juuse Saros made some great saves and blanked the Isles in the shootout, David Rittich had some big moments at the other end, including a late scramble where the Isles benefited from some healthy bounces and accidental blocks when regulation was still up for grabs.<\/p>\n
Saros made 30 saves including three stops across two non-threatening Isles power plays, one of which gave up the only Nashville goal. The Predators had just one power play of their own; the teams played 4-on-4 on three separate occasions, as the officials otherwise avoided creating special teams situations.<\/p>\n
But there was occasional ill tempers, including when Casey Cizikas was basically slew-footed by Tyson Jost and Cizikas took an offsetting roughing minor. (Officially, it was tripping by Jost and unsportsmanlike conduct by Cizikas, though the ref announced roughing for both through a mangled in-arena mic.)<\/p>\n
Another occasion was when Saros made a meal out of contact with Anders Lee above his crease, losing his stick and his earthly balance, while Lee tried to slide a rebound home \u2014 Saros stopped it \u2014 and then Adam Pelech put it into the net but after the whistle had blown. That brought extended shoving and heated discussion from all on the ice, save Rittich, who likely came up with some Czech one-liners as he observed things from his legal perch 200 feet away.<\/p>\n
Simon Holmstrom scored the only Isles goal, midway through the first period with a tired Nashville unit falling victim to a cycle activation by Scott Mayfield(!!), who pinched down the boards, around the net, and threw a pass that threaded through legs to find Holmstrom.<\/p>\n
Alas, the Isles power play gave it back seven minutes later when Cole Smith and Ryan O\u2019Reilly out hustled everyone on a broken clear. Smith hunted down the puck, finding the soft spot in the backcheck, then O\u2019Reilly sprinted just ahead of Jonathan Drouin to get free for the one-timer:<\/p>\n
There were chances, some good saves and posts the rest of the way, but \u2014 after an OT largely controlled by the Isles but with few threats other than Matthew Schaefer from the slot \u2014 it came down to just one shootout conversion.<\/p>\n
In that breakaway drill that defines a \u201cwinner\u201d and a \u201coh, that\u2019s a loser point\u201d in our modern times, O\u2019Reilly and Steven Stamkos were stopped (though Stamkos hit the post) by Rittich, while Mat Barzal, Holmstrom (who also hit the post) and Emil Heineman were stopped by Saros. Filip Forsberg\u2019s slick backhand while Rittich readied a pokecheck proved the difference.<\/p>\n
Before they cross the border, the Isles have date with the surging Minnesota Wild and Quinn \u201cnot even close to being a Devil\u201d Hughes on Saturday night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The New York Islanders followed up their gate-busting nine-goal romp over New Jersey with one measly goal against…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":400768,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5110],"tags":[5,122,3328,159,28169,5190,5189,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-400767","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-islanders","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-islanders","10":"tag-new-york","11":"tag-new-york-islanders","12":"tag-new-york-islanders-game-recaps","13":"tag-newyork","14":"tag-newyorkislanders","15":"tag-nhl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/115874224317133025","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400767","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=400767"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400767\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/400768"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=400767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=400767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=400767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}