from Stan Fischler of The Hockey News,
New York Islanders games toughen your nervous system; at least last night's 4-3 melodramatic win over the Panthers did it for The Maven. (And all this minus Mat Barzal.)
If Hollywood had scripted the last two games, it would have been two-for-two in the Oscar Department; and especially last night's performance in Sunrise under the sheltering palms of Amerant Bank Arena.
Of course, Ilya Sorokin -- the leading man -- would get the lead Oscar thanks to a 42-save performance.
Oscars for Best Supporting Actors go to The Grit Guys.
* Anders Lee -- Scored the big opening goal on the power play at 12:36 of the first period. (Thank You, Kyle Palmieri and Brock Nelson, for assisting.)
* Pierre Engvall -- His third red light of the season made it 2-1 at 4:37 of the middle frame. (Thank You, Alex Romanov and Brocktober-December, for helping out.)
I can explain it - Sorokin is playing like his old self and stopping goals at key times and Varly playing well. They are scoring more goals too. The Power Play per nhl.com is 9th overall and the PK is 31st overall. Last year the Power Play was 26th overall and PK was 16th overall A bit of a reversal. But besides the PK - the Isles have the worst 3rd periods. I read somewhere that the Isles are 1st in the NHL up until recently in terms of average minutes they held the lead in a game. If hockey were a 40 minute game - they would be at the top of the leaderboard perhaps. But maybe an older team just loses it in the third?
Save for Noah Dobson - who is becoming a top level player - the D has been pretty terrible.
Bo Horvat and Pierre Engvall have been good additions. Mat Barzal was out ill last night - so other guys chipped in. Matt Martin is I believe healthy again - but he is being outplayed by Hudson Fasching and Julien Gauthier in limited time. Pelech is out for quite a while.
The jury is out on this team - and San Jose is playing decent hockey (for them) in recent games and I will be at UBS to witness that. My biggest fear is that we continue to play well enough and finish 9th in the conference and be the BEST 9th PLACE TEAM in history. 5 teams from the Atlantic could make the playoffs. How about NJD??? they can't be that bad. I only watched the Isles and the wrap to B's vs. Leafs which was pretty good result in the end :)
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