The New York Islanders continue to surprise us. \u201cLose a critical home game to the Penguins\u201d was definitely in our probability set, but \u201chave the tables flipped in an 8-goal second period of an 8-3 blowout\u201d was not.<\/p>\n
That 8-3 final looks like a 5-3 game with three Patrick Roy empty netters, but it wasn\u2019t that. After a scoreless and pretty even first period, the second period got weird. Islanders took a 2-0 lead only to fall apart. They gave up five in the middle frame \u2014 one game after they pulled off that same trick against the Florida Panthers \u2014 to enter the third period trailing 5-3 somehow.<\/p>\n
Reversing the recent D-pair changes didn\u2019t help. The Penguins, who leap the Islanders for sole possession of second place in the Metro with the regulation win, tacked on three more in the third to remove all doubt.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t a great game for talisman Ilya Sorokin, of course (and co-talisman Matthew Schaefer went pointless and minus-2), but the defense was atrocious in front of him.<\/p>\n
Still, one of the harbinger deflation points was on their power play, which was responsible for the opening goal by Anders Lee but then gave that back on its second opportunity. Just after the Islanders restored their two-goal lead on another Brayden Schenn goal with smooth neutral zone transition from Cal Ritchie, the power play gave up a shorthanded goal by Rickard Rakell to cut the deficit to one again.<\/p>\n
It was lethargic work overall defending the counterattack, but Emil Heineman was stargazing as his man drove the net and Adam Boqvist defended the passer.<\/p>\n
Two minutes later, it was tied, and a minute after that, Pittsburgh pulled ahead for good. Mo Anthony Mantha joined Rakell in scoring a pair.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a parity league, so these things happen. But it\u2019s just bizarre how the Islanders can fall asleep against the Blackhawks, hang tough and get a regulation win against the Stars, erase an early deficit to storm the Panthers, and then do this with the Penguins all in a little over a week.<\/p>\n
Tomorrow night in Buffalo is no longer a \u201cbonus if we get something\u201d game. They\u2019ve got to get a point or two. There will be lots of other Eastern games that matter that night, and though the Isles will still finish the night in a playoff spot no matter what, their primary chasers from the outside each have two games in hand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The New York Islanders continue to surprise us. \u201cLose a critical home game to the Penguins\u201d was definitely…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":537110,"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-537109","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\/116336760160886983","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537109","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=537109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537109\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/537110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=537109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=537109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=537109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}