The New York Islanders suffered their second straight loss, falling 5-3 at the hands of the Philadelphia Flyers on Thursday night at UBS Arena.
Bo Horvat (PPG), Mathew Barzal and Anders Lee (PPG) scored for the Islanders, but it wasn’t enough to counter goals from Sean Couturier (1G,1A), Garnet Hathaway, Morgan Frost, Cam York (GWG) and Noah Cates (ENG), while Travis Konecny had a three-assist night. Ilya Sorokin made 19 saves on 23 shots, while Sam Ersson made 26 saves on 29 shots.
“I think we have to be disappointed in the result tonight,” Horvat said. “We did some good things, but we also did some bad things that cost us. If you want to be consistently winning in this league, playing against a rival like this, we have to be a lot better than we were tonight.”
The stakes were high heading into the first meeting between the division rivals with an important two points on the line for both teams, neck-and-neck in the packed Metro standings. The Islanders entered the game three points back of the Flyers with two games in-hand, but the Islanders (41 points) lost ground on Philly (46 points), with five points separating them in the standings.