Anders Lee lifted his arms, raised his head, closed his eyes tight and hardly moved an inch.
Right there, just above the crease, he was embraced by his Islanders teammates and embraced by a rather raucous home crowd. It was a moment that could stand as one of great importance as the Isles try to change the narrative of this disappointing season that has them in the cellar of the league standings.
“There was a lot released,” Lee said after his redirection of a Thomas Hickey shot stood as the game-winning goal with 26.6 seconds remaining in regulation en route to a 5-3 win over the defending Stanley Cup champion Penguins on Wednesday night at Barclays Center.
The Islanders had a 3-0 lead at the start of the third period, but blew it as the Penguins tied the score 3-3 with 6:52 to go in the third. For a team that has made a habit of blowing games late this year, it was all spiraling out of control too quickly. But then, with Lee’s fifth goal of the year and his fourth in as many games, it suddenly wasn’t.
“It’s something you have to get used to every year is closing out games,” Lee said. “We have to get used to that. We haven’t done the best job of that this year. And regardless of how it looked tonight, we did close it out.”
They did, and now the Islanders (8-10-4) have something positive to lean on. They outplayed the Penguins (13-7-3) for most of the first 40 minutes, earning that 3-0 lead on ugly and hard-working goals from Johnny Boychuk, Jason Chimera and Casey Cizikas. But there also were missed opportunities to bust the game open, like the two-minute five-on-three man-advantage midway through the second period that was thwarted most bitterly by a highlight-reel diving save from Pittsburgh goalie Matt Murray.
“You knew after the two-minute five-on-three when we didn’t score, that always comes back to haunt you a little bit,” coach Jack Capuano said. “But as we approach these games, we focus on the details, we focus on our work ethic, and don’t focus on the scoreboard. Just continue to play hard for 60 minutes, and the guys got rewarded.”
Yet that work ethic had not gotten the Isles the results they had wanted, and their appearance in the second round of the playoffs last spring seemed like a distant memory. What seemed more familiar was Sidney Crosby starting the snowball down the mountain when he made a great play to set up Connor Sheary’s goal 32 seconds in the third, cutting the lead to 3-1.
Isles goalie Thomas Greiss had been terrific in stopping all 22 shots he faced in the first 40 minutes, but now it was going in the other direction. After consecutive weak plays along the boards by horribly disappointing newcomers Andrew Ladd and Chimera, the Penguins got another from Justin Schultz at 10:40, and the game-tying tally from Evgeni Malkin at 13:08, setting the place aflame with the same-old-Islanders hard-luck blues.
“I don’t know if we blew the lead,” Capuano said. “I think they were coming.”
Of course they were. The Penguins weren’t about to roll over and die, and the Islanders knew that. They just couldn’t stop it.
“At some point you just have to dig in and fight back, and we did,” said Cal Clutterbuck, who did his best to tell Crosby close-up that he was tired of his stick-swinging and assorted antics.
But it surely doesn’t get any easier for the Islanders. They immediately traveled to Washington, where they will complete a back-to-back with a game against the Capitals on Thursday night. So this was a big win, and could be the start of something. Or it could be a blip on a season of nothing.
“We don’t have too many options but to get on a roll here,” Hickey said. “The outlook is pretty grim. So that’s the only option you have, get a couple in a row, and a great test [Thursday]. Getting these two teams back-to-back might be the best thing that could happen to us.”