R.I.P. Mr. LoFaso
On
Friday night, your New York Islanders hosted the Calgary Flames. The Isles were going for the season sweep of
the Flames and needed the two points to get back into first place in front of
the New York Rangers.
Lee-Tavares-Bailey, Grabner-Nielsen-Strome,
Kulemin-Nelson-Clutterbuck, Martin-Mouillierat-McDonald.
Leddy-Boychuk, Hickey-Hamonic, de Haan-Visnovsky.
Jaroslav Halak got the start with Chad Johnson backing
up.
The Islanders meant business in this game and came out
hard once again. The down side was that
even though they had tons of offensive pressure and were resilient on defense,
they had a sloppy game. The good news
was that they would get the 2-1 win after Ryan Strome (Tavares & Hamonic)
and Cal Clutterbuck (Kulemin & Hickey) scored for New York. In addition,
John Tavares tied for the NHL lead in scoring in the race for the Art Ross
Trophy.
The officiating could have been the story again in the
game. The Isles saw Johnny Boychuk’s defensive recovery in the
Islanders zone resulted in a penalty shot chance for Calgary and Michael
Grabner’s breakaway was clearly interfered with but no penalty shot was awarded. Jaro Halak made the save and is 2/3 in his
career by the way. Cal Clutterbuck
clearly scored a legal goal that the officials waved off. But he would score the ENG to seal the eventual
2-1 win late in the third, so thankfully, everything worked out this time. Another unfortunate occurrence was that Jaro
Halak (26 of 27 with a .963Sv%) was 20 seconds away from a shutout when Jooris
scored. Halak also went for the empty
net with just over a minute left in the game, but the Flames, Russel blocked
the on target attempt. The Isles were
1/3 on the PP and 2/2 on the PK and outshot Calgary 39-27 in the game. Kari Ramo (37/38) was awesome for Calgary and
deserves a mention.
Some standouts for New York were the play of the first
line as a whole, but John Tavares’ assist put him in the lead for points in the
NHL at 64. Michael Grabner looked good
again on both sides of his game and Travis Hamonic continues to improve with
less ice time per game and is +11 for the month. Ryan Strome does all the little thigns right
and once again scored a huge goal for the Isles because of his greatly
improving hockey sense and on-ice presence.
Jaroslav Halak has been a major story for the Islanders this year and
notched his franchise leading 33rd win (Smith, DiPietro, Osgood with
32) of the season already. The Islanders
are 2nd in the east (41-20-2 in 63 gp) at 84 points (MON 85) and
back to 1st in the metro division. Eric Hornick mentions, “Isles
re-tied Nashville for NHL lead in wins -- 41. Isles first in East to 23 home
wins as well. (Preds have 26).” Halak
& Strome were named 1st and 2nd stars of the game.
Isles
Notes:
NHL investigated alleged Clutterbuck spit on Sedin.
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