Jack Capuano wasn’t pleased with his team’s offense heading into Tuesday night’s game against the Blue Jackets.
A hat trick from Brock Nelson — and some shaky goaltending by Blue Jackets rookie Anton Forsberg — fixed that in a 5-2 win Islanders win in Brooklyn.
“That was the first in a long time,” Nelson said of his hat trick, as he helped the Islanders avoid a third straight loss. “Probably in Bridgeport [of the AHL] the first year after I left school. It’s been a while, but it’s a tough league to score in.”
That had certainly been true of late for the Islanders, who were shut out in a dismal performance in Philadelphia on Saturday after scoring just one goal against Washington.
But that was before the NHL’s worst team came to Brooklyn.
Though Columbus had been playing better since former Rangers coach John Tortorella took over earlier in the season for Todd Richards, the Blue Jackets have now dropped four in a row.
Columbus was just the tonic the offensively challenged Isles needed, as they were finally able to open quickly and scored just over five minutes into the game.
“The start was huge,” Brian Strait said. “The team over there is struggling a little bit. We wanted to instill doubt in their minds.’’
Ryan Strome scored his first goal since November, a span of 17 games, when he followed Matt Martin’s shot that got through Forsberg’s pads.
“With a young guy, you want to get all over him,” Strome said. “You could see the difference. We came out flying.”
After Columbus tied the game when William Karlsson pounced on a rebound of Jack Johnson’s shot that Thomas Greiss couldn’t handle at 10:26, Nelson put the Isles ahead again less than two minutes later. The Isles outshot Columbus 18-5 in the first period.
But the lead proved short-lived, as well, as the Islanders failed to clear the puck when a bad bounce off the boards got away from Mikhail Grabovski and David Savard made it 2-2 with a knuckling one-timer in the second.
Nelson’s 16th goal of the season put the Isles up for good. The tally pushed him past John Tavares for the team lead in goals.
Strait notched his first of the season early in the third — off an assist from Tavares — to give the Islanders some cushion and Nelson added an empty-netter in the final minute.
Capuano said he was pleased with Nelson’s outburst.
“The ability to get pucks to the net, that’s the one thing in his game he needs to work on,” Capuano said. “He works on it quite a bit. … The shot has always been there. It’s a matter of getting it off. It’s something we talk about all the time.”
It was Tortorella’s first trip to Barclays Center since becoming coach in Columbus and he complained about the difficulty in getting to the arena for the team’s morning skate from their downtown hotel.
“It looks like a beautiful building, but a pain in the [butt] to get here,” Tortorella told reporters before the game.