Islanders top Panthers in shootout

SUNRISE, Fla. -- Mathew Barzal scored the only goal in the shootout to help the New York Islanders to a 5-4 win against the Florida Panthers at BB&T Center on Monday.
Barzal scored in the top half of the third round with a deke to his backhand on his first NHL shootout attempt. Vincent Trocheck, Aleksander Barkov and Jonathan Huberdeau all failed to score against Jaroslav Halak.

"Honestly, I didn't even have a move coming into it," Barzal said. "I just was trying to read off him and got in tight there. It's kind of a move I've done for a while and went to my backhand."
WATCH: [All Islanders vs. Panthers highlights]
Anders Lee, Thomas Hickey, Brock Nelson and John Tavares scored for the Islanders (16-8-2), and Joshua Ho-Sang had two assists. Halak made 39 saves.
The Islanders have won eight of their past 10 games.
Roberto Luongo, who earlier this season became the fourth-winningest goalie in NHL history, left the game early in the second period with an apparent lower-body injury. He'll have an MRI on Tuesday.
Keith Yandle had a goal and two assists for the Panthers (10-13-4), who have lost three straight games (0-1-2). Aaron Ekblad and Barkov scored power-play goals, Denis Malgin had a goal, and Trocheck had three assists.
"It's tough," Trocheck said. "Our No. 1 goalie has been outstanding for us the last four, five years, so it's obviously tough whenever he goes down. And to see him in so much pain, it kind of gave us a little boost almost after that just to try to kind of win it for him."

Luongo was injured at 2:31 of the second period when he made a pad save with his right leg on a slap shot by Ryan Pulock. Luongo immediately lay on his stomach after kicking out his right leg to make the save. After being attended to on the ice, he didn't put any weight on his right leg while being helped off by two trainers.
Luongo left the game with the score tied 1-1 after making 12 saves. James Reimer made 16 saves in relief.
"Your first thought is you hope he's going to get up and it's just a minor tweak, but that wasn't the case," Reimer said. "It's never fun when you see your partner go down with that. We're hoping for the best for him, but at the same point you're just trying to get yourself into the game and ready to go. It's too bad and I hope he'll be all right."
The Islanders led 4-3 going into the third period before Malgin tied the score at 5:06 when he one-timed Trocheck's pass from behind the net.

After Yandle opened the scoring with a shot through the screen at 10:25 of the first period, Lee scored his 100th NHL goal at 13:51 to make it 1-1.
Hickey gave the Islanders a 2-1 lead at 5:35 of the second period.
Ekblad and Barkov scored 1:49 apart to give Florida a 3-2 lead before Nelson tied it at 16:19. Tavares gave the Islanders a 4-3 lead at 18:21.
"A few things happened in the second period," Tavares said. "It ended up being pretty tight; we gave up the lead. Not too many chances once they tied it. It came down to the shootout."

Goal of the game

Malgin's goal at 5:06 of the third period.

Save of the game

Reimer made a sprawling save against Barzal at 3:25 of overtime.

Highlight of the game

Barzal's game-winning goal in the shootout.

They said it

"He wouldn't stop staring at me as I picked the first two guys. I wouldn't look at him. Somehow, he thinks that's why I picked him, because he was staring through me. He's a confident kid and wanted to get out there. Those were the three I was going with." -- Islanders coach Doug Weight on selecting Mathew Barzal for the shootout
"I thought we took the pace to them the majority of the game. Obviously with (Luongo) going out, there was obviously a drop in our game and we kind of hung (Reimer) out to dry a little bit. But after we got our focus back and got back to work, I thought we did a good job for the majority of the game." -- Panthers defenseman Keith Yandle

Need to know

Tavares' goal helped him take sole possession of sixth place on the Islanders' all-time list with 567 points. He had been tied with Pat LaFontaine. … The Islanders have scored four or more goals in eight of their past 10 games. … It was Panthers associate coach Jack Capuano's first game against New York since being fired as its coach on Jan. 17.

What's next

Islanders: At the Tampa Bay Lightning on Tuesday (7:30 p.m., TVAS, SUN, MSG+ 2, NHL.TV)
Panthers: Host the Winnipeg Jets on Thursday (7:30 p.m., FS-F, TSN3, NHL.TV)