Surging Islanders hold off Red Wings
DETROIT — Don’t call the Islanders dead yet.
It might prove too little and too late in the end, but they are coming home with four points out of four from a crucial twogame road swing and their first real momentum in three weeks after beating the Red Wings, 5-3, on Thursday night.
A playoff deficit that looked nearly out of reach at the start of the week now stands at five points to the third-place Flyers. It’s not an ideal spot to be in on March 1. But with the Flyers expected to sell at the trade deadline, the Islanders look in position to pounce.
“Tonight I was very impressed with our group,” coach Patrick Roy said. “Even when [Detroit made] it a 2-1 game, we didn’t change our game. When they scored early in the third period, we didn’t change our game. We took a 3-2 lead, didn’t change our game. I think the dressing room really made a commitment to shut this down and turn it around.”
Throughout a final period that started with the Islanders holding a 2-1 lead that had already been cut in half, this had all the makings of the sort of game they have let fall through their fingers too many times this season.
They did not have enough possession, especially after taking the lead. The still-new top-six looked to be figuring each other out, though the bottom two lines were further along the learning curve. The other shoe felt like it was going to drop, especially after a second period the Islanders spent on their heels.
In fact, it appeared to do just that when Patrick Kane took the opening faceoff of the third period, went down the ice and scored just 10 seconds in, tying the game at two.
But instead of reverting to a defensive shell, taking a penalty or doing any of the other things that have lost the Islanders games in similar spots this year, the Isles got on a power play of their own and scored — with Brock Nelson wiring one past Alex Lyon from the right circle for his second goal of the night — within five minutes to take the lead right back.
The seesaw took one more turn from there, when Olli Maatta finished a long offensive-zone shift for Detroit by scoring his second goal of the game from the right circle at the 10:49 mark of the third to re-tie the game.
Again, the Islanders had an answer, with Mathew Barzal banking the puck off an out-ofposition Lyon from below the right circle with 6:02 to go.
“I think you give up a couple tying goals in the third and what can you really do about it after they’ve gone in the net but go get another one?” Cal Clutterbuck told The Post. “You gotta give guys props for going out there the following shift and getting it.”
Holding that lead would not come easily, with the Red Wings continually threatening. But Ilya Sorokin was up to the task in a sterling 22-save performance that included an out-of-nowhere left toe stop — with some help from the post — on Kane’s chance that appeared to be going into an open net at the 15:47 mark of the last period.
This was the Vezina-contending version of Sorokin, right when the Islanders needed him, in a victory capped off by Pierre Engvall’s empty-net goal — the first of the season for the Islanders. Better late than never. Too often this season, the Islanders have failed to live that mindset. That is the biggest reason they are where they are in the standings, and it will take more than a good road trip to fix it.
But this might be a start.