RALEIGH, N.C. — The first 25 minutes might have been the best 25 minutes the Islanders played Monday night.
But that didn’t mean much, as the Islanders only had three shots on net in the final 35 minutes.
Even before that, they were very fortunate to hold a three-point lead from the start until squandering it in a 5-3 blowout loss to the Hurricanes in Game 2. And they knew it.
“To be honest, I don’t think anything has changed,” captain Anders Lee said. “We just couldn’t get out of our zone cleanly tonight. Their forecheck was good most of the night, but we just couldn’t get clearances when we needed clearances. When we had them, we buried our chances early. They kept coming at us like we expected them to, but we just couldn’t break it down tonight.”
If the Islanders had continued to win, it would have been primarily an indictment of Frederik Andersen, who allowed three goals on just 12 shots and started two consecutive games for the first time since returning from injury in March. It would be.
According to Natural Stat Trick’s tally, the Canes had an impressive 6.15 expected goals, 23 dangerous chances, 34 shots on target, and 110 shot attempts.
There’s no way to handwave that, even considering Carolina is a team known for shooting the puck at a high rate, and considering the Islanders blocked many of their shot attempts.
“It’s not just the last few minutes of the game,” coach Patrick Roy said. “That’s how I felt when I took that penalty.” [in the second period] This gave them momentum and the game moved a lot. And for some reason, we started losing one-on-one battles and didn’t do a very good job of taking the puck off along the wall, but they took advantage of it and rallied. ”
Even that interpretation of events — Roy added that he likes the way the Islanders started the game — counts as generous.
Carolina had its first seven shots of the night on net, and the Islanders went into the first 13:30 of the game without testing Andersen.
Their first unblocked shot attempt missed the net, but it didn’t happen until six minutes into the game.
This was the opposite of Game 1, where the Islanders had most of their chances but couldn’t capitalize on Andersen.
If they had put more pressure on the struggling goalie at any point on the night, talk would have been swirling about the disturbing situation in the net for Carolina, which now has the series tied at 1.
What if, what if, what if.
