3 Takeaways: Lee Leads Islanders Past Hurricanes 5-4

The New York Islanders are heading into the holiday break on a high note, beating the Carolina Hurricanes 5-4 on Saturday night at PNC Arena.

Anders Lee’s 250^th career goal held up as the game-winner, part of a three-point night (1G, 2A) for the Islanders’ captain. Sebastian Aho, Brock Nelson (1G, 1A), Bo Horvat (1G, 1A) and Mike Reilly (1G, 1A) also scored for the Islanders, while Mathew Barzal and Kyle Palmieri each had two assists.

Teuvo Teravainen, Sebastian Aho (PPG), Jaccob Slavin and Stefan Noesen (PPG) scored for the Hurricanes. Ilya Sorokin stopped 36 of 40 shots in the win, while Pyotr Kochetkov stopped 23 of 28 in the loss.

With the win, the Islanders have points in 17 of their last 19 games. In the process, the Isles (40 points) leapfrogged the Philadelphia Flyers (39 points) for second place in the Metropolitan Division and put a little separation between themselves and the Hurricanes (38 points).

“We’ve been building here and putting a lot of solid hockey together,” Lee said. “Anytime you go into a break you want to be feeling good. We knew the importance of tonight.”

ISLANDERS TAKE ADVANTAGE OF HURRICANES GOALTENDING:

Goaltending has hampered the Hurricanes this season and the Islanders took advantage of a shaky Pytor Kochetkov on Saturday night, scoring five goals on the Hurricanes netminder for the second time this season.

Through two games, both at PNC Arena, the Islanders have scored 10 goals on 46 shots on Kochetkov.

The goal parade started early, as the Islanders scored three goals on their first 11 shots, with Sebastian Aho opening the scoring with his first of the year at 11:19 – capping off a crazy sequence with a wrister past a downed Kochetkov, who, to his credit, stopped quality looks from Brock Nelson and Kyle Palmieri.

Teuvo Teravainen evened the score at the 12:22 mark, but the Islanders quickly retook the lead, with Nelson netting a shot through a screen. Horvat extended the Islanders lead to 3-1 before the end of the period, one-timing a cross-ice pass from Mathew Barzal that clipped Kochetkov’s pad/blocker and dropped over the line.

Carolina’s Sebastian Aho scored a power-play goal 59 seconds into the middle frame, but Mike Reilly reestablished a two-goal lead at 14:12, knuckling a shot from the blue line blocker side.

The teams continued to trade goals, with Jaccob Slavin slapping a one-timer high past Sorokin to make it 4-3, but Anders Lee responded to make it 5-3. Noesen’s power-play goal made it 5-4, but that’s as close as the Hurricanes came. The Islanders have scored three or more goals in 17 of the teams last 19 games.

“We have some offense of our own,” Head Coach Lane Lambert said. “We made some pretty good plays on the goals. Do we want to go up and down? No, not totally, but we can go up and down.”

ISLANDERS HOLD OFF HURRICANES:

The Islanders have been able to score on Carolina this season, netting 13 goals over three games, but holding off the Hurricanes had been a different story.

After coughing up a 3-0 lead in a 4-3 loss on Nov. 4 and allowing Sebastian Aho to tie the score with two seconds left in an eventual Isles OT win on Nov. 30, the Islanders held firm in regulation on Saturday.

The shot-happy Hurricanes peppered Ilya Sorokin to the tune of 40 shots, but while Carolina was able to get the game to 3-2, 4-3 and eventually 5-4, the Isles remained calm and went back on the offensive, save for a final flurry, where Sorokin really shined.

“The bench was actually pretty calm,” Reilly said. “It was just a bit of a next man up, next shift mentality and we were able to do that. Sorokin made a couple of huge saves and there were a couple of guys who laid it on the line blocking shots.”

LEE CONTINUES TO LIGHT LAMP:

Anders Lee continued to hold the hot hand, scoring for a third-straight game on Saturday.

Lee slipped a no-looker along the ice far side past Kochetkov to make it 5-3. It was a big goal, not only as the eventual winner, but the Islanders captain also hit a milestone, netting his 250^th goal of his career, becoming just the ninth player in team history to do so.

Lee is up to 10 goals on the season, with nine of them coming in the past 18 games, a solid response after only scoring once in the first 15 games of the year.

“You just stick with it,” Lee said. “You continue to work at it and get your touches and continue putting your game in place. It was a matter of time in some areas and also on me to pick it up and figure it out a little bit and a combination of both is working well and I think our line is playing some really solid hockey and creating a lot of opportunities.”

NEXT GAME

The Islanders – and the NHL – are off for the next three days for the NHL’s Christmas break. They’ll be back in action on Dec. 27 when they take on the Pittsburgh Penguins.