Abdelkader, Mrazek help Red Wings defeat Islanders

NEW YORK - Forward Justin Abdelkader scored the go-ahead goal in the second period and goaltender Petr Mrazek made 27 saves to help the Detroit Red Wings to a 4-2 win against the New York Islanders at Barclays Center on Monday.
Forwards Brad Richards and Luke Glendening and defenseman Danny DeKeyser had goals for Detroit (25-16-8), which won seven of eight road games heading into the All-Star break.

Mrazek has allowed two or fewer goals in each of his past eight starts. He went 7-1-1 in January.
"I think (Tomas Tatar) said it once this year about Petr, he's the same whether it's the Stanley Cup Playoffs or he's playing hockey in the summer," Red Wings coach Jeff Blashill said. "He just seems to have the same approach all the time, whether it's road, home. None of that stuff seems to bother him. He's been pretty consistently good throughout the season, certainly the last month or so he's been real good.
"I think it takes elite goaltending to win in this league. I think we're going to have to continue to get elite goaltending to win as we go through the rest of the year."
Islanders forwards Brock Nelson and Mikhail Grabovski scored and goaltender Jaroslav Halak made 22 saves for New York (25-16-6), which also played its final game before the break.
The Islanders play 35 games over the final 68 days of the regular season.
"If you just go look at the standings, we've had a pretty good first half," Islanders coach Jack Capuano said. "It's a tough division to be in. It seems like every night in the Metropolitan Division, teams are winning. A little inconsistency in certain areas of our game, but overall the guys have worked. They play within the team concept. We went through a pretty good stretch here; unfortunately, we came up short tonight.
"When you get back (from the break), there's a lot of hockey. It's one of those situations where I personally didn't like the week that we had. We didn't play at all, it's like we already had our All-Star break, and now we have another break again."
The goaltenders were tested early. Halak made a save with his left pad, stopping Detroit center Riley Sheahan's shot from the left circle 3:07 into the game. Mrazek denied Islanders forward Anders Lee on a breakaway 26 seconds later.
Richards opened the scoring with a power-play goal 10:57 into the game. With Nelson in the box for hooking, Nikolay Kulemin made an errant clearing attempt from behind the net out front and Richards promptly stuffed it past Halak to give Detroit a 1-0 lead.
"If we weren't 7-1, who knows where we'd be (in the standings," Richards said of Detroit's recent road success. "Lot of urgency, lot of realization that we had that good schedule going into Christmas. We knew we'd have to put together a good effort on the road, and we've done that. Great goaltending, key goals at certain times, key special teams and just overall good, solid efforts."
Nelson tied it at 16:33 of the first period. With the teams at even strength, Islanders center John Tavares collected the puck near the left boards and found Nelson in the slot, where the latter roofed a shot over Mrazek to make it 1-1.
Abdelkader put the Red Wings back in front at 13:29 of the second period. Red Wings forward Dylan Larkin worked his way around Islanders defenseman Calvin de Haan at New York's blue line and fed Henrik Zetterberg in the slot. Zetterberg faked a shot and fed Abdelkader at the right circle for his first goal in eight games.
DeKeyser doubled Detroit's lead 1:11 later after intercepting Islanders defenseman Brian Strait's pass in the neutral zone. DeKeyser's initial shot hit Strait's skates, but he quickly put the second attempt past Halak to make it 3-1.
"Poor second period obviously got us behind the 8-ball," Tavares said.
Mrazek preserved the two-goal lead when he robbed Islanders forward Matt Martin with a glove save with 8:35 remaining.
Grabovski got the Islanders within one when he scored his first goal in seven games with 4:48 remaining. Martin sent Grabovski on a breakaway and he beat Mrazek with a wrist shot to make it 3-2.
"We definitely want to find that consistency," Martin said. "I think we were starting to find our groove over the last four games or whatever it was. We started playing really good hockey, and then we had that long break. Obviously we didn't have a great game tonight, but where we are in the standings is good. But we still want to play with that consistency level that we played with last year.
"But even last season, our last 20 games weren't great. Hopefully we can find our game here in the last 30-someodd games and be playing really good hockey heading into the playoffs."
Glendening's empty-net goal sealed it for Detroit with 44.2 seconds remaining.
"Any time you can beat an Eastern Conference opponent in regulation it's huge because there's so many three-point games nowadays and it really makes it tight coming down towards the end of the year," DeKeyser said. "Any time you can [win in regulation] during the regular season, it's big."