Islanders’ toughness, talent on display in series clincher

Anthony Beauvillier paid the price for scoring when he absorbed a big hit from Tom Wilson into one of the goalposts. He shook off the pain and returned to the game.

From start to finish, the play on Beauvillier’s second goal in Game 5 Thursday night encapsulated the New York Islanders. They have the young speed, skill and talent to make a deep run in the Stanley Cup playoffs, and they have coach Barry Trotz’s trademark structure and toughness ‒ that’s always a thorny problem for any opponent in the NHL.

“When we’re playing the right way, you can feel it on the bench,” forward Josh Bailey said after eliminating the Washington Capitals with a 4-0 win.

The Islanders are having fun and will take some major confidence into the next round after dispatching the Capitals convincingly. They’ll face either the Eastern Conference top-seeded Philadelphia Flyers or the Boston Bruins. And if fifth-seeded New York plays like it did for most of the first round, it’ll give either higher-seeded opponent a major challenge.

“We always try to say that it’s about what we do, so it doesn’t matter who we’re playing,” defenseman Adam Pelech said. “We just try to stick to our game plan and the things that make us successful.”

That’s team defense from the forwards back to goaltender Semyon Varlamov ‒ the kind of suffocating style that, when done correctly, can bother even the most talented players on the other side, as the Capitals and Alex Ovechkin found out.

“We knew what kind of hockey team they are over there and how they can be very frustrating to play against,” said Washington’s John Carlson, who won the Cup in 2018 when Trotz was the Capitals’ coach.

That’s Trotz hockey, and it works even better with scoring punch to go the other way. In Washington, it was Ovechkin, Nicklas Backstrom, Evgeny Kuznetsov, T.J. Oshie and Carlson. In New York, it’s Beauvillier and Matt Barzal, who combined for five goals in the first round.

Beauvillier scored on the power play midway through the first period Thursday and then at even strength in the second. Empty-netters by Nick Leddy and and Bailey sealed it for New York.

Stars 7, Flames 3 — Denis Gurianov scored four goals, including a hat trick in the second period while also assisting on the go-ahead score, as Dallas rallied from an early three-goal deficit and finished off Calgary in six games in a Western Conference series in Edmonton.

The Stars, the third seed in the Western Conference, will play secondseeded Colorado in the second round.

Gurianov had two goals in the first 3:25 of the second period, and his third capped the the Stars’ five-goal second period. He also scored on a rebound midway through the third period.

A centering pass from Point bounced off Cirelli’s skate in front of the crease, and the puck began sliding toward the goal line, ever so slowly, as the Blue Jackets were powerless to stop it. Goaltender Joonas Korpisalo was out of position and didn’t see it, and defenseman David Savard had it even worse.

Savard had to watch the puck slide over the line while Cirelli tied up his stick. And as brutal as that was to stomach, Point’s goal was even more difficult to accept — created by a pass from Savard to his defensive partner, Vladislav Gavrikov that bounced off the latter’s right skate and slid directly to Tampa Bay’s Nikita Kucherov.

A quick feed to Point in the slot, a nice deke move by Point and the Blue Jackets’ season was over.

“We get a fluky goal scored on us to tie the game, but to lose it on a freebie, that’s what (ticks) me off,” Tortorella said. “And, listen, those two defensemen … have played so hard. I’m not blaming them, but it just aggravates me, even this morning, that we lose it on a freebie.”

He wasn’t the only one.

Blue Jackets general manager Jarmo Kekalainen sn’t ready to move on yet, either. He knows a busy offseason is ahead, with the draft and free agency crammed into a month’s time in October, but the series against Tampa Bay remains fresh between his ears.

“We did so many good things in that series,” Kekalainen said on the same conference call. “It’s a bitter pill to swallow that we’re here now. I truly thought for sure we’d be playing tonight, and if we’d gone to Game 6, who knows? But I’m not going to get into the ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ and you know what … ”

Until he did, that is, because he just couldn’t help it.

“We had 24 shots, I think, in that period and we’re in their zone the whole period,” he said, referring to the Jackets’ two goals and 24-8 edge in shots in the second period of Game 5. “We get the (3-2) lead at the end and we get to 4-2 and then lose that lead … it’s hard to swallow right now. But we’ll just have to learn from it and move on.” bhedger@dispatch.com @Brianhedger

“We get a fluky goal scored on us to tie the game, but to lose it on a freebie, that’s what (ticks) me off.”