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The New York Islanders dropped Game 1 of their first round series against the Carolina Hurricanes last night, falling 2-1.
The game also marked Mathew Barzal’s return to the lineup, joining the top line with Bo Horvat and Anders Lee.
The Islanders were pretty lifeless in the first half of the opening frame and surrendered a power play goal to the Hurricanes early, with Sebastian Aho one-timing a shot past Ilya Sorokin. After being outshot about 10-1 to start the game, the Islanders did have a power play midway through the frame though and actually had some really good opportunities. They were able to build a bit of momentum from there and started sustaining a bit more offensive zone time, but remained down through 20 minutes.
Then in the second frame, the Hurricanes once again capitalized on the man advantage, with Brent Burns putting a shot through traffic to that was tipped in by Stefan Noesen, putting Carolina up by two. However, the Islanders responded only 24 seconds later, with Ryan Pulock beating Raanta on a bad goal that ramped off his stick and in, cutting the lead in half. New York ended up getting into penalty trouble in the first half of the period though and were just playing on their heels for most of the frame, being outshot 14-7, but still escaped down only one.
The Islanders actually did have some good chances early in the third period, but couldn’t beat Raanta. Then after a fairly even frame, New York had a late power play chance to tie it, before pressing with the goalie pulled, but couldn’t convert and fell 2-1.
It shouldn't take much motivating for a team to come in ready to go for their first playoff game in two years, but the Islanders just lacked a spark early on. Through much of the first 40 minutes really, New York was kind of just hanging in. I thought they did get some of their best chances in the third period, but it wasn’t much of a complete effort.
New York had a really hard time getting anything going off the rush, and were getting completely shut down in terms of making clean zone entries. The Hurricanes did a good job clogging up the neutral zone and really limited what the Islanders could do at even strength.
Obviously, it’s great to have Mathew Barzal back, and typically he’d be key to solving that zone entry issue. At the same time, he wasn't as much of a factor as expected for much of the game and you have to wonder how healthy he really is.
Penalties were an issue as well, and the Hurricanes surprisingly did take advantage, with two power play goals. Again though, the Islanders spent so much of the first half of the game shorthanded that even if they hadn’t ended up down two goals, it was going to be tough to build any momentum themselves through that stretch.
It wasn’t a great opening game for New York, but the fact they hung around despite this is a reason for optimism, I suppose. Carolina came out and played pretty much up to their level, but were having trouble solving Sorokin. If the Islanders can actually get strong starts going forward and play their game, this is still a series they have a very good chance in.
Game 2 is set for tomorrow night.
QuizMaker
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