FINISHING SCHOOL
Islanders dominate to close out Panthers
Islanders coach Barry Trotz wanted his team to find its killer instinct for Game 4, and boy, were they lethal.
With a 5-1 win Friday afternoon, the Islanders knocked the Panthers out of the best-offive qualifying round and punched their ticket to the first round of the 16-team Stanley Cup playoffs. The win at Scotiabank Arena in Toronto allowed the Islanders to secure their second straight appearance in the first round. They now await the result of Sunday’s Capitals-Bruins game to see who they will face next.
“We had only one goal: To be the better team and win a hockey game,” Trotz said on a Zoom call. “There was no ‘me’ in anybody, it was all ‘we.’ Everybody was, as I use the term, pulling on the rope. I didn’t have any passengers, and our bench would not allow anybody to be a passenger, which is a great sign.”
After swinging and missing on their chance to complete the sweep in Game 3 after going up 2-0 in the series, the Islanders refused to let the final win of the series get away a second time. Left winger Anthony Beauvillier jump-started the Islanders with two goals, 3 minutes and 38 seconds apart, in the first period to create a margin the Panthers chased for a majority of the game.
Then a back-breaking goal from Mathew Barzal, his first of the series, at 10:34 of the third officially put the game out of reach at 4-1 before Jean-Gabriel Pageau chipped in an empty-netter to seal the Panthers’ eviction from the bubble. Goaltender Semyon Varlamov turned aside 24 of the 25 shots he faced.
“I think we all know as a group that the style of our play isn’t flashy but we trust and believe in one another,” said Brock Nelson, who registered his second goal of the series to make it 3-1 in the second period and added an assist in Friday’s win. “Every line can go out there and contribute fiveon-five and is also responsible defensively against anybody on the other side.”
Ryan Pulock denied the Panthers a chance to get back into the game. He made a spectacular diving play to deflect a tap-in by Aleksander Barkov with this stick, preventing the Panthers from cutting the lead to a goal midway through the second period.
“To me, it was one of those defining moments,” Trotz said.
Trotz inserted Leo Komarov into the lineup in place of Tom Kuhnhackl to bolster the Islanders’ penalty kill, which proved effective as they killed off three of the Panthers’ four man-advantage opportunities.
Beauvillier sent a surprise backhanded shot that flipped through Bobrovsky’s pads to put the Islanders up 1-0 at 11:32. Varlamov came up with a big save on Barkov on the other end in the next shift.
“I was just trying to get it on net and I got a good bounce there, we got fortunate on that goal and it was huge for us to play with the lead,” Beauvillier said. “We played the right way today and it’s getting us into the playoffs.”
After catching Florida on a bad change, Barzal sent a crisp pass on the odd-man rush for Beauvillier to slam home for a 2-0 lead at 15:10. Barzal was stifled with three minutes left in the first, splitting defenders in the Panthers zone and getting a shot off that Bobrovsky had to deflect away.
The Islanders’ momentum slipped away just as quickly as it came after Jordan Eberle was called for hooking at 18:29. Twelve seconds into the man-advantage, Mike Hoffman capitalized to make it a one-goal game.
Bobrovsky kept the Panthers in it early in the second after a long shot from Pulock put the puck right in front of the netminder, who made back-to-back highlight-reel saves on Anders Lee and Barzal attempts off rebounds.