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Good Morning, Islanders Country.
(Deep Sigh) Where to begin?
There have been tough, demoralizing losses this season, but none of them unfolded quite like what we saw last night in Montreal. There was an awful start, a much better middle, a resilient comeback, and an absolutely brutal ending.
The Islanders have found ways to give away points all season, and in each of those games, there have been defining moments. Too often, those moments have been the byproduct of porous puck management and painfully poor decisions.
Trailing 3-0 after a mistake-filled five-minute stretch, Montreal provided the Islanders ample opportunities to come back in the game. As the power play opportunities mounted and the shots on goal piled up, it felt like a game where a comeback was possible, if not plausible.
“We talked about the mindset, I just wanted us to mainly focus on what we have to do," Patrick Roy said. “There was about seven minutes left in that [first] period, we didn't need to give up another one. Let's try to switch the momentum and find a way to score."
Halfway through the third period, with the deficit still at two, that feeling was fleeting until Brendan Gallagher’s dirty elbow hit on Adam Pelech, which gave the islanders a five-minute major power play. After three minutes, Mathew Barzal picked a corner, and Kyle Palmieri stuffed in a loose puck to tie the game.
Patty Roy was pumped, the bench was buzzing. And then….
As has happened too often, disaster then struck. Pierre Engvall made his second costly and extremely avoidable turnover of the night, and the Islanders, for their second straight game, put 40+ shots on net, out-chanced their opponents by a wide margin, and have 0 points to show for it.
Roy said he was happy with the team’s resiliency, but there have been too many losses like this one to lament this season for any moral victories. He’s only three games in; this was new for him, and he understandably was focused on the positives. Unfortunately for us, it followed a familiar yet more eventful script.
Let’s dive in.
🏒 IN SHORT: Sean Monahan had two goals and an assist, including the game-winner with 2:12 remaining as the Montreal Canadiens recovered from giving up a 3-0 lead to beat the New York Islanders 4-3 in Patrick Roy’s return to Bell Center on Thursday night. Bo Horvat, Matt Barzal, and Kyle Palmieri each scored power-play goals for Isles (20-17-11), who got 22 saves from Semyon Varlamov and made 22 in his return to the lineup. Nick Suzuki had a goal and an assist for Montreal (20-21-7), which ended a three-game losing streak. Sam Montembeault made 44 saves in the win.
KEY MOMENT(s):
🔷 Mathew Barzal had the puck on his stick all night. The Islanders’ All-Star cut the lead to 3-2 at 14:52 with a shot over Montembeault’s left shoulder from a sharp angle to bring the Isles to within one.
🔶 Kyle Palmieri tied it 3-3 at 16:28 when he stuffed in the puck from the left side of the net after Noah Dobson’s shot was redirected.
🔻 Pierre Engvall made his second costly turnover of the night, leading to a perfect one-timer from Sean Monahan over the glove of Varlamov.
3 REACTIONS
❶ RESILIENT GROUP: "Frustrating result considering the effort," Anders Lee said after the Islanders fired off a season-high 46 shots. "We stuck with it and grinded ourselves back into that game and played a good hockey and for the most part. A resilient group tonight down three and not giving up."
❷ WE’LL GET RESULTS: "If we continue to play and put efforts like we did last game and for the majority of tonight's game, we'll get results," said Noah Dobson, who had three assists in the loss. "We'll stick together as a group and turn the ship around."
❸ DIDN’T GET JOB DONE: "We were down 3-0 and they were all power play goals. Five on five I thought we were doing a lot of good things, it was just a matter of us doing a better job on the penalty kill in the first period," Bo Horvat said. "And then the rest of the game I just thought we kind of took over, but at the end of the day we just didn't get the job done."
GAME IMPACT SCORE
⏭ NEXT UP: The Islanders play their final game before the All-Star break on Saturday night at home against the Florida Panthers. Face-off is 7:30 PM ET.
📊 STANDINGS:
📰 NEWS: There’s concern for Islanders defenseman Adam Pelech after he was hit with a dirty right elbow in the head by Canadiens forward Brendan Gallagher, leading to a five-minute major match penalty. Pelech, who missed 21 games last season with a concussion, left the ice at 11:52 of the third and did not return. The 29-year-old former All-Star has been unable to avoid injury in recent years, having also missed 23 games this season with two separate injuries.
Thomas Hickey as especially upset after the game. "This is a disgusting hit. This isn't 1990 or the early 2000s. This needs to be out of the game. Just a terrible, terrible hit,” the former Islanders’ defenseman said.
Gallagher has never been suspended in his 12-year NHL career.
Martin Out, Engvall In
Islanders forward Matt Martin was out of the lineup and considered day-to-day with his sickness. With Pierre Engvall returning to action after missing four games, Hudson Fasching moved to the fourth line with Kyle McLean and Cal Clutterbuck. Fasching left the game and did not return after he was denied a breakaway opportunity and fell awkwardly into the boards.
Romanov Rising
On NewYorkIslanders.com, there is a story on 24-year-old defenseman Alexander Romanov, who has picked things up offensively this season while maintaining his notoriety as a player who can throw a big open ice hit.
He’s made a good early impression on his new head coach, who sees the potential in Romanov to get even better. “I love his intensity, he’s a warrior out there,” said Islanders Head Coach Patrick Roy. “It’s fun to have a player like this around. He’s young and there’s still some work to do, but he’s very receptive.”
Romanov leads all Islanders defensemen in hits (64) this season and ranks second on the team with 104 blocked shots, right behind Noah Dobson (108). He has scored a career-high five goals this season, including one in Roy’s debut vs. DAL.
📚 SOUND SMART: Per Eric Hornick in The Skinny, Noah Dobson is the first Islander since Bryan Trottier in 1983-84 to have at least 45 assists in the team's first 48 games. Dobson is the only defenseman in Islander history to do so; Trottier did it five times, Clark Gillies and Mike Bossy did it once.
Dobson is the first Islander defenseman with three power-play assists in a game since Chris Campoli (10/18/2007 @ Washington); Mathew Barzal is the only forward to do so in the interim (2/9/2018 vs. Detroit).
🎥 ISLES REWIND: On Jan. 26, 1982, the Islanders set a team record for the fastest four goals in a game as John Tonelli, Bryan Trottier (twice), and Duane Sutter all scored within a span of 1:38 during a 9-2 win against the Pittsburgh Penguins at the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum.
“How does it feel?'“ repeated the shell-shocked Pittsburgh goalie Michel Dion after the game. ''You don't feel nothin; it's like a tornado; it happens so fast.''
The surge did not break the league mark for the fastest five goals at any part of a game. That was set by Pittsburgh in 1972 when they scored five times in the third period vs. St. Louis in a span of 2:07.
🎧 Double Chili: Islanders alum Benoit Hogue “Former Islanders forward Benoit Hogue joins the "The Double Chili Islanders Podcast" with Peter Schwartz ahead of Alumni Weekend. Peter talks to Benoit about the festivities this weekend, the 1991 trade that brought him to Long Island, the run to the Conference Finals in 1993, becoming a full-time resident of Long Island and the current Islanders team”
🔗 Patrick Roy reveals when he found out he was going to be Islanders' next head coach by Andrew Gross, Newsday “Friday, I received a call from Lou that he was going to hire me,” Roy said before the Islanders faced the Canadiens on Thursday night at Bell Centre. “So I had to leave Florida, flying to Montreal and then drive from Montreal to New York on Saturday and then meet with Lou on Saturday when I got to New York late in the afternoon. And then meet with the coaches.”
🔗 Patrick Roy touched by Canadiens’ pregame gesture: ‘I’m thankful” by Ethan Sears, NY Post “After spending the buildup to his return to Montreal insisting on putting the focus on the Islanders, here came proof positive that hope was in vain as cheers turned to rapture once the scoreboard camera panned to Roy’s No. 33, then to the Islanders’ new head coach.”
And we leave you with this ….Montreal welcomes Patrick Roy home in style.
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