|
Poulin Gets It Done Against the Bruins |
|
|
|
|
|
It took until 6:15 of the second for someone to score. Sean Cuthbert of Hockey This Week said it would take a mistake for a goal, and it did. Krejci’s turnover in front of his own net to Vanek was saved by Johnson, but it bounced off his shoulder and John Tavares, who parked himself in the paint, wait for the puck to come below the crossbar before he batted it in. That was Tavares’ sixth of the season.
Matt Donovan improves every game showing he can play in this league. Meanwhile, Radek Martinek has made a few errors.
The game was a little exciting when a turn-over caused a breakaway for Vanek. Chad Johnson decided to be extremely aggressive and skated out towards him to and pokes it away from him causing a breakaway in the opposite direction with the puck on Marchand’s stick and Poulin made the save.
Old MacDonald got a goal, E-I-E-I-O, making it 2-0 as Vanek was waiting for the puck in front of the net, but he didn’t need to touch it.
Brock Nelson was called for a penalty immediately after the goal deflating the momentum the isles had built. Grabner had a short-handed chance on a breakaway but he never even took a shot. With three seconds left of the penalty, it looked like dominos falling onto Poulin in the net and the Bruins scored cutting the Isles lead in half.
The Islanders didn’t let the goal get to them, With Kyle Okposo skating hard over the blue line, he passed to Thomas Vanek who scored his first goal as an Islander only 41 seconds after the Bruins scored. And the crowd erupted in appreciation of Vanek’s first goal.
With 55.9 seconds left of the second, Doug Hamilton heads to the box for holding.
The third period began with the Isles on a power play for almost a minute, and they came out looking slow. It was a terrible power play effort.
Brock Nelson had a good chance to score when Krug hooked him and the Isles went back on the Power Play for all of 20 seconds when Tavares was called for hooking Marchand evened things out. Tavares was given an extra two minutes for unsportsmanlike conduct for pleading his case.
So the same officials that let everything go for four minutes decided to start calling absolutely everything instead. The Bruins had numerous chances, but didn’t score. There was even one instance where we all looked around and asked “How did that not go in?”
When Tavares was finally sprung from the box, he came out with a vengance but the Isles didn’t score and Clutterbuck was mugged in the corner and never dropped his gloves. It didn’t matter, he got two minutes along with his attacker. Once out of the box Clutterbuck had two shots stopped by Chad Johnson, which was disappointing for me since I had a feeling he’d score in this game.
Chara was sent to the box and the Isles were back on the power play, but you would have never known it. Once again, it seemed the Islanders were play to just maintain and not to win.
With 1:33 remaining, Chad Johnson headed to the bench. He had a good game, and didn’t have to punch Poulin in the face. (That was him, right?)
Poulin had to make two good saves right off the face-off.
Michael Grabner had another chance at a breakaway with an empty net. He didn’t make that one either.
Kevin Poulin earned the fans appreciation as well as new found respect for the saves he was making in the last 23 seconds of the game. He was named second star of the game and Thomas Vanek was named the first. The Isles came away with four points in back-to-back games, and that is an unusual occurrence. Chalk it up to anything you’d like, but this is still a game of inches. One glaring error turns the game around and it’s difficult to keep from making that error for a full sixty minutes.
This time, the effort was there, along with the luck. The Isles managed 34 shots on net, a far cry from last night, but the Bruins had only 27. The win will go a long way to increase the confidence level of many, but there is obviously still a lot of work to be done.
New York Islanders Blogger • 
Join the Discussion:
»