The New York Islanders grinded out a 3-2 OT win over the Carolina Hurricanes on Saturday in comeback fashion. In the process, they picked up their season-long, fourth-straight win at UBS Arena.
Brock Nelson scored at the 2:03 mark of overtime to cap off the Islanders’ comeback after Alexander Romanov (1G, 1A) and Anders Lee scored in regulation to overcome an early 2-0 deficit. Jack Roslovic and Sebastian Aho scored first period goals for Carolina while Pyotr Kochetkov made turned aside 23 of 26 shots in the overtime loss.
Ilya Sorokin earned the win in a rare, one-save effort, making an overtime relief appearance after Marcus Hogberg’s (24 saves) night ended due to injury after he played the first three periods. The win lifted the Isles above NHL-.500 for the first time since Nov. 14.
“I’m very proud of the way we were resilient,” Head Coach Patrick Roy said. “But more than that, we showed character when we were down 2-0 and we stopped the bleeding. I was very proud of the way the guys played and stuck with it.
Not only did the Islanders pull off the win, but they did so skating with five defensemen after Ryan Pulock went down early in the contest with an upper-body injury. In addition to the in-game adversity the Isles improved to 3-3-0 on the season in the second game of back-to-back sets. Romanov was quick to point out that an intense training camp was meant to help their stamina in these situations.
“When we did whammies in the summer,” Romanov said. “As Patty said, we did it for back to backs games, right?”