Isles get Pen’ed down

PITTSBURGH — The Islanders struggled to get the puck past Penguins goaltender Tristan Jarry, who recorded 31 saves. Sidney Crosby didn’t do the Isles any favors, either, picking up his sixth goal of the season as the Penguins held off the Islanders, 4-1, on Thursday night.

Teddy Blueger, Jason Zucker and Bryan Rust also scored for the Penguins, who collected just their third regulation victory of the season to bounce back from a dismal loss to Washington on Tuesday.

“We didn’t have enough push,” Islanders coach Barry Trotz said. “They backed it up pretty good. They did a good job of keeping everybody back. So we can be better. We can be better. Our game wasn’t a 4-1 game, in my opinion.”

Semyon Varlamov made 31 saves for the Islanders and Brock Nelson scored late to help the Islanders avoid being shut out, but their three-game winning streak came to a halt thanks to a second straight strong performance from Jarry.

The Penguins and Islanders finish their two-game set Saturday night. The teams meet again Feb. 27-28 in Long Island.

Crosby gave the Penguins the lead 4:15 into the game, though Kapanen did most of the grunt work, stripping the puck from Nelson in the right circle. Kapanen turned and fired at the net as he fell to the ice. Crosby’s deft redirect in the 999th regular-season game of his career gave the Penguins — who have spent much of the opening quarter of the season playing catch-up — a lead.

Facing each other for the third time in 10 days, things turned chippy fast. Pittsburgh’s Brandon Tanev and the Islanders’ Casey Cizikas drew fighting majors early in the first period. Mike Matheson earned a boarding call in the third against Mathew Barzal, and Evgeni Malkin and Scott Mayfield were hit with misconduct penalties in the final minutes.