Tonight, your New York Islanders will face the
rival New York Rangers at MSG for the first of three meetings in the month of
January. The Islanders have climbed to
within 5 points of a playoff spot, so a win tonight would be equal to 4 points
in the playoff race. Cam Talbot will be
in net for the Rangers, with Lundqvist out due to illness.
Forwards:
Vanek-Tavares-Okposo,
Regin-Nielsen-Bailey, Grabner-Nelson-Clutterbuck, Martin-Cizikas-McDonald.
D-Pairings:
Strait-MacDonald; de
Haan-Donovan; Hickey-Martinek.
Kevin Poulin will get the start in net with
Anders Nilsson backing up.
The Rangers jumped out to an early 1-0 lead in
the first minute of the game and again at the midway point for a 2-0 lead. The Isles are moving the puck well, and
taking the play to the Rangers, but are very shaky on the defensive side of the
play. Matt Martin scores (Tavares &
Okposo) late in the period to bring the
Isles within a goal, 2-1 the score. The
Islanders continue to play hard, but just need to focus on finishing and to
stop giving these officials the chances to make bad calls against them when
they are trying to get back into the game.
Rangers score again off another weak roughing call against Martin, 3-1
Rangers.
Thomas Hickey (Okposo & Vanek) converts some
nice passing into a 3-2 game. Just
three minutes later, Colin McDonald is relentless with a lose puck in front of
the net, gets his own rebound and ties the game at 3-3. Kevin Poulin with some big saves late in the
second to preserve the tie thus far.
Isles are starting to outwork and frustrate Rangers on both ends of the
ice. Their defensive play is better in
the third and helping Poulin do his job.
With about 5:00 remaining, Thomas Vanek slides it around Talbot for a
PPG off a beautiful passing play from John Tavares and Frans Nielsen, 4-3
Islanders. In the closing minutes with
the Rangers net empty, Frans Nielsen scores the ENG to make the final score, 5-3
Islanders. The Isles out shot the
Rangers 37-33 and went 1/5 on the PP.
The Islanders really made a statement
tonight. They came back once again from
a two goal deficit and kept fighting until the go ahead goal was scored late in
the third at MSG. In the final five
minutes, they kept a desperate Ranger team at bay and scored the empty net goal
to seal the win on the road, grab 2 points and take two away from the Rangers.
No comments:
Post a Comment