Simon Holmstrom had his biggest game as an Islander and Ilya Sorokin kept the Wild barrage at bay as the Isles won in overtime, 4-3 in Minnesota.<\/p>\n
This was an occasion where the Islanders were not the better side, but they refused to wilt nor slow their tempo against one of the top teams in the league. That makes nights like this possible and fun \u2014 though also dependent on the top-level goaltending they\u2019ve received from both netminders this season.<\/p>\n
Holmstrom\u2019s game winner 94 seconds into overtime capped a sterling night, which also included his impressive shorthanded assist on Casey Cizikas\u2019 equalizer with 26 seconds left in the second period and a shot from distance earlier in that period that tied it at 2-2.<\/p>\n
The Islanders hung in there all night, tying the game three times and mounting counterattacks after each scary phase of sustained Wild pressure. There were many times where the Wild dazzled with their cycling and puck movement \u2014 often requiring big stops from Sorokin \u2014 but the Isles didn\u2019t respond to those by simply trying to catch their breath; instead, they took their turns attacking.<\/p>\n
That included the dying minutes of regulation, when the Quinn Hughes Show \u2014 three assists on the night and could\u2019ve been more \u2014 was in full effect. But the Isles followed a long stretch in their own zone with a dangerous counterattack that concluded with a classic Anders Lee screen and tip, stopped by Filip Gustavsson.<\/p>\n
To meet the Wild\u2019s speed, Patrick Roy made a couple lineup changes, with Adam Boqvist \u2014 playing on his natural side \u2014 coming in for Cole McWard, and Max Tsyplakov providing a little life in place of Kyle MacLean.<\/p>\n
Sorokin was acrobatic as usual, but the night belonged to Holmstrom\u2019s attributes. On the Cizikas shorthander, Holmstrom intercepted a dangerous slot pass, made a move with his long reach to trap a Wild pinch and then lead a semi-odd-man rush. Holmstrom stared down Hughes long enough to create a lane for him to set up Cizikas, who needed to make a smart five-hole move to finish the sequence.<\/p>\n
On the OT winner, Holmstrom circled the zone and accelerated away from a Hughes-Boldy coverage exchange to get himself a lane to Gustavsson. He faked the shot and then used his reach to backhand around the Wild goalie, giving the Isles two points on a night when they could\u2019ve easily netted zero.<\/p>\n
Chapter 3 of the seven-game road trip comes Tuesday when the Islanders visit the Winnipeg Jets and hang out in Canada for a bit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Simon Holmstrom had his biggest game as an Islander and Ilya Sorokin kept the Wild barrage at bay…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":401125,"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-401124","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\/115875069717172011","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401124","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=401124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401124\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/401125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=401124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=401124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=401124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}