The Islanders are fighting an uphill battle in the playoff race, but Friday night they got a breath of fresh air, striking first in a home-and-home with the Penguins that bridges the weekend.
Zach Parise’s game-winner with just under three minutes to go gave the Islanders a badly needed 5-4 victory over the Penguins at UBS Arena. In stunning comeback fashion, the Islanders vaulted into a playoff spot as theyearned two points from a game that looked as though it was on course to be a disastrous loss.
Afterward, asked if it had the air of a season-saving victory, Parise cocked his head and almost shrugged his shoulders.
“It’s crazy to think about that right now at Game 58,” he said, “but yeah.
“I mean, we got teams that are climbing behind us with games in hand, we got teams that we’re trying to catch. There’s just not a lot of room for error for us right now. Huge.”
With the win, the Islanders jumped the Panthers and Capitals, and now occupy the second wild-card spot in the Eastern Conference. They also tied Pittsburgh on points for the first wild-card spot. And because of the NHL’s loser point system, the Islanders are on a three-game points streak, after they lost in overtime to the Canadiens and in a shootout to the Senators.
Such is the fickle nature of momentum in a playoff race.
“We stuck with it,” Anders Lee said after a two-goal performance. “Couple moments there where we weren’t at our best but we didn’t give up at all. We fought this one all to the end and credit from [Ilya Sorokin] on out.”
The Islanders trailed 4-3 heading into the third period and were quite lucky to be that close after they had played a largely lifeless first 30 minutes. Lee’s goal off a redirect from Mathew Barzal with under 30 seconds to go in the second period had given them an open door.
Brock Nelson ran through that door when he ripped a one-timer on the power play to tie the score at 4-4 just 5:01 into the final period, and the listlessness with which the Islanders had played quickly meant nothing.
Then, with just 2:43 to go, Parise got his stick on Nelson’s backdoor feed and tapped it in, falling to the ice and sending UBS Arena into a frenzy.
“Well we all look at the standings,” Parise, who was playing his 1,2000th career game, said. “We knew the importance heading into the game. … We knew we were gonna get some looks and it was just up to us to capitalize on it.
Given how the game looked halfway through and given that the Penguins held a 45-28 edge in shots, it’s borderline stunning the Islanders were even in the game, let alone that they won. But the Islanders’ performance was a throwback to the early days of the season, when resilience was their calling card, and it came at the perfect time.
The Islanders, though they had two days off since their previous game, came out of the gate slowly. They fell behind as Sidney Crosby banged in a rebound 12:00 into the game after Pittsburgh had spent a stretch of play in the Islanders’ zone. Just 3:56 later, though, Lee played his own rebound off Penguins goaltender Casey DeSmith’s body, as if it were a golf shot, to tie the score.
After a first period in which the Islanders were outshot 18-8, they looked even worse at the start of the second. Rickard Rakell and Jason Zucker both scored for Pittsburgh within 5:35 to make it 3-1, prompting Islanders coach Lane Lambert to call his timeout.
The message?
“Wake up,” Parise said.
Nearly 10 minutes later, Nelson stopped the Islanders from hitting the snooze button for a second time a she bolted up the ice for a wraparound goal to pull his team within one. Rakell scored again off a Crosby feed, but barely 30 seconds later, Lee tallied his second goal to cut Pittsburgh’s lead to 4-3.
“That was kinda the turning point, if you could pick one,” Lambert said. “Getting that goal after they had just scored, it was huge.”
That set up the third period, which the Islanders hope can galvanize them for the rest of the season.
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