ISLES FALL BEHIND EARLY, CAN’T COMPLETE COMEBACK BID:
After giving up three goals in 32 seconds on Thursday and a pair of goals 56 seconds apart on Tuesday, the Isles again allowed two goals in quick succession on Saturday afternoon, as Paul and Kucherov scored a pair of goals 1:22 apart to open up a 2-0 lead in the first period.
Paul opened the scoring at 4:12, knocking in a cross-ice pass from Brandon Hagel that first hit the left post and then Ilya Sorokin’s (19 saves) right skate before crossing the line. The goal came just after the Islanders shorthanded unit successfully killed off a penalty against Tampa’s top-ranked power play.
The Isles thought they’d evened the score less than a minute later, with Mathew Barzal’s cross-crease pass deflecting off a driving Bo Horvat in the crease, but the goal was overturned due to an offside zone entry.
Instead of being tied 1-1, Kucherov made it 2-0 Tampa less than a minute later, as his point shot beat a screened Sorokin at 5:34, forcing the Isles to play catchup.
“It's not easy playing from behind all the time,” Noah Dobson said of allowing goals in quick succession. “Just managing those situations in the games where if we give up one, the next shift, that mentality has to be the most important to go get the momentum back.”
The Islanders fell behind 3-0 in the second period, as a Matt Martin boarding penalty yielded a Point power-play goal at the five-minute mark. Sorokin was only able to get a piece of Point’s wrister before it snuck through the Isles netminder as the league’s top-ranked power play took advantage of the league’s 32nd ranked penalty kill.
After being out-attempted 50-30 in the first two periods, the Isles found a way to break through offensively in the third period and mount a late comeback bid with the goalie pulled.
Lee got the Islanders on the board with 6:16 to play in the third period, redirecting a Barzal pass past Andrei Vasilevskiy (32 saves) just after an Islanders power play expired. Barzal picked up his 300th career assist in the process.
That sparked the Isles, who again pulled Sorokin in favor of an extra attacker, to turn a power play into a six-on-four advantage. Dobson fed an open Nelson with a cross-ice pass that the Isles leading goal scorer sniped his team-leading 25th goal of the season.
The Isles made one last push, but Glendening eventually iced the game, burying an empty-netter with 30 seconds to play.
“We talked about sustaining more pressure off the forecheck,” Head Coach Patrick Roy said. “We have the tendency maybe to reload instead of keeping the pressure on and when we started doing this, good things happened. We pulled the goalie and that created some energy for our team and we scored two and unfortunately we came up short.”
