{"id":504186,"date":"2026-03-15T05:19:30","date_gmt":"2026-03-15T05:19:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/504186\/"},"modified":"2026-03-15T05:19:30","modified_gmt":"2026-03-15T05:19:30","slug":"islanders-3-flames-2-got-the-points-after-holmstrom-pair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/504186\/","title":{"rendered":"Islanders 3, Flames 2: Got the points after Holmstrom pair"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">For the third Islanders game in a row, a team got out to a 3-0 lead and had trouble holding it. This time, however, the Islanders \u2014 after lamenting their slow starts \u2014 got that early lead only to make things tough on themselves in the third.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Still, they hung on for the two points after the Flames tested them with two goals in the first half of the third period. They received some big saves from Dave Rittich and held on for a 3-2 win that they just had to have, with Columbus nipping at their heels for Metro playoff spots and the Atlantic offering two wild card holders who have more points.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Things got off to a slow start with only 5 total shots through the first 10 minutes, when Casey Cizikas opened scoring by driving the net and stuffing it until the puck got over the line.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Simon Holmstrom then added a pair of his own to finish out the 3-0 lead before the buzzer for the first intermission. That included another bit of shorthanded magic with his running mate and confidence guru J-G Pageau.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Holmstrom\u2019s prior goal came on a feed from Brayden Schenn, which moves the newcomer out of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/teams\/NYI\/skaters.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">that 58-way tie for 444th all-time<\/a> among Islanders points scorers. He escapes Danton Cole and Jason Strudwick territory to join luminaries like Carson Souch and Andy Andreoff with two points in his Islanders tenure.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">That combo was actually part of the big news, and latest line tinkering, heading into the game. Anthony Duclair stepped in and Schenn centered him and Holmstrom, sending Cal Ritchie to the Anders Lee-JG Pageau line. Ondrej Palat was on the fourth line with Casey Cizikas and Kyle MacLean.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">If it felt like things could be on cruise control leading 3-0 against one of the league\u2019s bottom feeders with 20 minutes to go, the Flames had other ideas. Led by captain Mikael Backlund\u2019s tip-in 2:17 in, they were not going away. When Blake Colelman (why wasn\u2019t he firesaled at the deadline?) made it 3-2 at 8:28, the rest of the game was damned uncomfortable.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">The Blue Jackets won in a shootout, the Red Wings rallied from 2-0 down in the third to get a regulation point, and Pittsburgh was leading Utah in the third at the time of this writing. There is a major playoff race fight going on, and just because the Isles have been in playoff position for a couple months running doesn\u2019t mean they\u2019re not a bad couple games away from falling below the line.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">\u201cI don\u2019t know if I ever played in front of better fans than what we have here. We really appreciate them showing up to support and cheering for every single one of us.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">&gt;&gt;David Rittich after fans chanted his name in the first and third<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">The Islanders begin a Canada tour next week, starting with a visit to free-falling Toronto on Tuesday before stops in Ottawa and Montreal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For the third Islanders game in a row, a team got out to a 3-0 lead and had&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":504187,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5124],"tags":[895,26,5294,896,5,28169,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-504186","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-calgary-flames","8":"tag-calgary","9":"tag-calgary-flames","10":"tag-calgaryflames","11":"tag-flames","12":"tag-hockey","13":"tag-new-york-islanders-game-recaps","14":"tag-nhl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504186","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=504186"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504186\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/504187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=504186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=504186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=504186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}