The Islanders came into Thursday needing to generate more puck pressure and forechecking, crash the net more often and take some of the pressure off Ilya Sorokin’s shoulders.
Mostly, though, they just needed two points to break a three-game losing streak.
It wasn’t quite as pretty as they would have liked, but the Islanders overcame a mess of penalties and a blown lead to earn a 3-2 win over the Senators and boost their record to 3-2-1.
“I thought our penalty killing — and your goaltender’s your best penalty-killer — I thought they did a great job all night long, really,” coach Lane Lambert said. “And so that was basically the reason we won the hockey game is, our penalty kill was good.”
At the start of the third period, it looked as though the Islanders were about to dither away the lead.
They’d already allowed Ottawa to tie the game at two, blowing an early lead, and had taken two penalties in the last minute of the second period to hand the Senators a four-on-three.
But, with some desperation and help via Ottawa’s sloppiness, the Islanders managed to kill off the penalties.
And just a few minutes later, Noah Dobson fired them back into the lead with a breakaway one-timer from the high slot off Mathew Barzal’s feed.
“Obviously, he’s got a ton of speed. That’s a threat to any D-man,” Dobson said. “When he comes flying in, you gotta respect that. They had a chance on one end, kind of got caught. Just saw a chance, made a nice play, put it into the wheelhouse.”
For the last 13:15 of the game — leaning more on Sorokin than they perhaps would have liked — the Islanders managed to hold onto the lead, crucially staying out of the penalty box as they did so.
Those two penalties at the end of the second, by the way, were the Isles’ sixth and seventh of the period; and eighth and ninth of the evening. To put it kindly, that is a bad way to try and win a hockey game.
The Islanders allowed a goal at four-on-three 6:52 into the second, with Claude Giroux’s wrist shot beating Sorokin clean.
A little over five minutes later, Jakob Chychrun tied the game at two with a shot through traffic, but the night changed in between the two goals, when Ottawa’s Erik Brannstrom was stretchered off after appearing to hit his head on the ice following a hit from Cal Clutterbuck.
The stoppage in play to load Brannstrom onto the stretcher lasted over five minutes and took the air out of UBS Arena.
A game the Islanders had dominated early started to turn the other way. But crucially, the four-on-three goal was the only one the Senators scored in 10:58 total on the power play.
“I think we tried to take away the most dangerous options,” Clutterbuck said. “You’re down a guy, so you give a team that many chances to find some holes. When they did, [Sorokin] was there like he always is.”
The Islanders struck first 2:41 into the night, when Bo Horvat converted on the power play, cleaning up a rebound from the low slot. Clutterbuck doubled the lead 13:05 into the first after Casey Cizikas won the puck on a forecheck behind the net and fed Clutterbuck in the slot.
The good thing for the Islanders: The third period looked more like the first. And Sorokin, who finished with 45 saves, can weather most storms.
“I think five-on-five, especially in the first period, we were playing well,” Clutterbuck said. “So, needed to get back to five-on-five and do the same thing.”
After a trio of losses in which the Islanders got taken out of their game and relied on quick-strike moments for offense more than sustained pressure, that was a necessary turnaround.
Really, so was the mere act of getting two points.