Good Morning, Islanders Country.
Wait, what? No overtime? Last night’s game against the Detroit Red Wings was following the same orange and blue blueprint of this crazy season until it didn’t.
The Islanders blew not one but two third-period leads, the first just 10 seconds after the puck dropped for the third period. I was streaming the game, which means it’s on a 30-40-second delay. I made the mistake of checking my phone just before the third-period faceoff, and the Islanders team account said, “Tied.”
What? How could that be? And then I watched it happen. It was the first time in 98 years that the Red Wings scored ten seconds into a period. So I saw history, on delay, but history nonetheless. After playing so well, the Islanders were knotted 2-2 on the road against the hottest team in the league with 19:50 left to play.
We knew how this one was going to end, only this time, we were wrong.
After the Isles regained and then relinquished another lead, Mathew Barzal scored the type of goal you’d expect to go against us, banking in a shot off of Detroit goalie Alex Lyon with 6:02 left to play. Do you know what my first thought was? There’s too much time left on the clock!
Detroit unsurprisingly had some chances and hit a post before pulling their goaltender. Then the unthinkable, the unimaginable happened. In their 59th game, the Islanders scored their first empty netter, allowing them (and us) to breathe for a change during the final 30 seconds of the game.
After their first regulation win since Feb 8. the Isles now head back to Long Island with some much-needed momentum and a bit more belief that playoff hockey is a possibility as we enter the fourth quarter of the season.
Coming up, Brock passes Ziggy, and Clutterbuck is ready for whatever happens next. Plus, the anniversary of a pair of leap year debuts, another one for a gold medalist, and a hockey play-by-play parody you don’t want to miss.
Let’s dive in.
🏒 IN SHORT: Brock Nelson scored twice, and Pierre Engvall scored the team’s first empty net goal of the season to lift the New York Islanders to a 5-3 win over the Detroit Red Wings at Little Caesars Arena on Thursday. The loss ended Detroit’s six-game winning streak. Mathew Barzal had a goal and an assist in the third period for the Islanders (25-20-14), who won their second straight game after losing five of six. Ilya Sorokin made 23 saves. Olli Maatta scored twice for Detroit (33-21-6), who hadn’t lost since Feb. 15. Alex Lyon made 22 saves.
KEY MOMENT(s):
🔷 After Patrick Kane scored 10 seconds into the third, Brock Nelson put the Isles back ahead 3-2 with a power-play goal from the bottom of the right circle at 5:04. For Nelson, it was his 35th career multi-goal game and passed Ziggy Palffy (34) for the ninth most in Islanders history.
🔻 Maatta scored his second of the game and just fourth of the season to tie it 3-3 at 10:49, shooting into an open net off a cross-ice pass from Shayne Gostisbehere.
🔶 After the puck broke free from the crease, Barzal raced to get it and fired a shot from below the goal line off Lyon and into the net for the lead.
3 REACTIONS
❶ START OF SOMETHING: “We want it to be [the start of something],” Nelson said after the win. “We had a good trip, now we have to go back home and get some rest because it doesn’t get any easier for us.”
❷ GONE EITHER WAY: "That was such a big game for us," Barzal said. "It was a good back and forth hockey game, it's a good team over there. It probably could have gone either way tonight, so I'm glad we came out on the right side."
❸ CONNECT MORE: "In the third, I thought that line of Barzal, Horvat and Brock suddenly started to connect more, they started really working together," Patrick Roy said.
GAME IMPACT SCORE
⏭ NEXT UP: The Islanders return home to host the Boston Bruins on Saturday night. Face-off from UBS Arena is scheduled for 7:30 PM EST.
📊 STANDINGS:
📰 NEWS: Ahead of last night’s game in Detroit, there were some injury updates passed on by GM Lou Lamoriello. Defenseman Scott Mayfield remains in New York and is listed day-to-day with a lower-body injury. Mayfield has missed the last three games and a total of 17 this season.
Meanwhile, F Hudson Fasching is expected to be recalled from AHL Bridgeport at the end of his conditioning stint, though he will remain on long-term IR. The AHL conditioning will continue for D Samuel Bolduc.
End of the Line?
Cal Clutterbuck, who skated in his 1,000th career game this season, is in the final year of his contract. That’s new territory for the 36-year-old, who signed a two-year extension at the trade deadline the last time he was in this situation. However, the league’s all-time letter is ready for whatever comes next.
“I just feel like these things will work themselves out, and honestly, whatever does end up happening, I just feel like I’ve done plenty,” Clutterbuck said on Wednesday. “If it ended today, then, aside from winning a Stanley Cup, I feel like I’ve put everything I had into it. I wouldn’t be remorseful or regretful with anything. That’s why for me, I’m not worried about it.”
“If it happens, it happens. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t. The best situations — things work out for you when you allow yourself to sit back and let things happen the way they’re supposed to happen. Not try to force things.”
Taking a Leap
Yesterday was leap day and also the 40-year anniversary of the NHL debuts for Pat LaFontaine and Patrick Flatley. Flatley (wearing No. 8) opened the scoring on his first shot in a 4-3 win over the Winnipeg Jets and added an assist. LaFontaine was held scoreless but registered a hat trick three days later.
📚 SOUND SMART: Per Eric Hornick in The Skinny, The Isles scored an empty-net goal for the first time in 65 games (Zach Parise 3/27/2023 vs. New Jersey). Pierre Engvall took a pass from Simon Holmstrom and carried it all the way to the crease for the easiest of empty-netters. The win was the Islanders’ first on Leap Day in 40 years, having lost their previous four games on Feb. 29.
🎥 ISLES REWIND: Just days after his ‘Miracle on Ice’ team toppled the Soviet Union on their way to a gold medal at the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, defenseman Ken Morrow made his debut with the Islanders on March 1, 1980.
The gold medal game was on February 24, 1980, against Finland. After the victory, Morrow visited the White House with his teammates before joining the Islanders for their playoff push that would culminate in the franchise’s first Stanley Cup.
🎧 Weird Islanders: The Podcast! - Episode 44 - Justin Papineau “First ever Weird Islanders guest Carey Haber is back to chat with Mike and Dan about Justin Papineau, the vaunted return in the trade of Chris Osgood that turned out to not be. With a young Rick DiPietro (allegedly) ready for starting duty, the Islanders chose to trade Osgood to St. Louis for one of the Blues' most tantalizing prospects.”
🔗 Why the Islanders can’t afford to follow the Red Wings’ bumpy road through a rebuild by Ethan Sears, New York Post “The Red Wings are fun, stacked with young talent and starting to reap the rewards after a long rebuild. The next playoff streak probably won’t last a quarter-century, but it looks set to start this season and there is no reason to think Detroit will be an easy out. For the Islanders, however, it is the Red Wings’ path to this point that could prove instructive.”
🔗 Islanders' Matt Martin grew up rooting for Patrick Roy's Avalanche — but he's yet to tell his coach by Andrew Gross, Newsday “Martin revered Joe Sakic and when the franchise moved to Colorado from Quebec in 1995 and future Hall of Fame goalie Patrick Roy – now Martin’s coach with the Islanders – arrived later that year, he started rooting for them on the cusp of their bloody rivalry with the Red Wings.”
And we leave you with this ….the lip-synching play-by-play dup “shepmates,” who are twins from down under, announcing Patrick Kane’s goal in Chicago this week.
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