TWIST OF LATE
PITTSBURGH — Three times in a row against the Penguins, the Islanders have gone into the third period needing a comeback. And three times in a row, they’ve delivered — this time in even more jaw-dropping fashion than the previous two.
The Islanders completed their first-ever season sweep of the Penguins on Thursday with a 4-3 overtime victory following two goals in the final 5:29 of regulation that would have come from nowhere, if they were not the third act of the same movie we saw on Feb. 17 at UBS Arena and Feb. 20 here in PPG Paints Arena. Brock Nelson provided the overtime goal, finishing off a breakaway on Ilya Sorokin’s assist to put an exclamation mark on another stunning comeback against the Penguins, as well as an end-to-end period of three-on-three hockey.
“I mean, geez,” captain Anders Lee said. “It wasn’t our prettiest game by any means, but we battled.”
This was a testament to the Islanders’ resiliency, their eighth win of the season trailing after two periods and sixth win in eight games after Mathew Barzal went down injured. Their chances of finishing ahead of the Penguins and snaring the first wild-card spot in the Eastern Conference are very much alive. As for the playoffs, the math now looks entirely in the Islanders’ favor.
“It’s belief in ourselves, that’s the biggest thing,” said Casey Cizikas, whose feed to Hudson Fasching in the crease got the Islanders within 3-2 late in the third period. “The game’s not won after four minutes. It’s a full 60-minute game and we believe that when we play our game, we can play with the best of anyone.”
With 76 points in 67 games, the Islanders hold at least an ostensible advantage over the Penguins, who have 74 points in 64 games. They also gained an additional two points on the Sabres, who got blown out 10-4 by the Stars to fall eight points behind the Islanders with three games in hand.
For the Islanders, Thursday’s game turned on a dime after 40 minutes of disastrous hockey, in which breaking out of the zone looked like an impossible task and defensive-zone structure seemed like an improbable concept.
But Fasching’s dive onto Cizikas’ pass with 5:29 to go set off a familiar feeling inside PPG Paints Arena and on the Islanders’ bench. What happened before didn’t matter. Only what would happen next. And at six-on-five, the inevitable occurred, as Lee tied the game with 1:15 left, deflecting a puck through Tristan Jarry’s five-hole to send the game to overtime.
Once there, it was Nelson who finished off the Penguins after Sorokin
denied two Grade-A chances and sent the puck up the ice on a poke check to take it away from Rickard Rakell.
“Fasching and Casey just getting the one, that’s what we talked about was getting one [in] the first 15, 16 minutes to give us a chance late,” Nelson said. “Did just that and then we get a big goal at six-on-five from Leesy.”
Outside of Lee’s power-play goal 5:23 into the match, the Islanders spent just about the entire first 40 minutes on the back foot. Twice in the first period, that resulted in Penguins goals. Jake Guentzel tipped in Marcus Pettersson’s point shot at 11:07, then Jason Zucker got free in the slot to one-time a feed from Evgeni Malkin in at 18:24. They got a third on Josh Archibald’s tip-in at 10:49 of the second. But 40 minutes of dominance does not a victory make.
Just over two weeks ago in this same building, the Islanders received news that Barzal would be out on a week-to-week basis with a suspected knee injury. Since then, they are a logic-defying 6-1-1 with a flair to their step in third periods. Since then, the playoffs have gone from a possibility that seemed to evaporate with Barzal’s injury to the likely destination for this team.
No one expected the Islanders to come back and win this game. But then again, no one expected a run like this either.
“The game’s not over until that final buzzer goes,” Cizikas said. “And we just keep pushing. No matter what happens, we’re gonna leave it all out there.”