Experience is a great teacher when it comes to playoffs for any sport.
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This is a series that is tailor-made for the Islanders.
Florida has Jaromir Jagr, Shawn Thornton (who played with Boychuk on Boston teams that won a Cup in ’11 and went to the finals two years later), Brian Campbell and an injured Willie Mitchell. Moreover, the Islanders are ranked 17th in power play percentage with 18.3 and 4th in penalty kill percentage with 84.5.
Luongo is the oldest goalie in the playoffs at 37 years of age.
To come back three times to tie it, it showed the Islanders were patient, smart and unnerved.
I don’t even know what to call that line, certainly not “second-best” line, maybe “WTF are you doing?!” line. “We got pucks in deep, we worked their (defense)”. “There’s been some ups and downs, just as there’s ups and downs in a playoff series”, Tavares said before the series, via Arthur Staple of Newsday. There’s pressure now on the Panthers to respond after a deflating loss.
Corey Crawford had a strong game in net and Duncan Keith also scored for Chicago in his first game back from a six-game suspension for a risky high stick to Minnesota’s Charlie Coyle.
The Panthers got off to another fast with Reilly Smith collecting his league-leading fourth of the playoffs just 2:33 into the opening period.
Reilly Smith had a goal and two assists, and Aleksander Barkov and Nick Bjugstad also scored for the Panthers.
Despite looking like the roof would cave in on the Islanders during the first 40 minutes, John Tavares, who seems destined to have an epic postseason, provided his team stays around a while, tied the game at 3 with 22 seconds left in the second off a gorgeous cross-crease feed from Kyle Okposo.
The Islanders will look to go up 3-1 when the teams meet Wednesday at Barclays Center. They’re hockey players and they understand what it’s all about. The Islanders have been there before.
Ryan Strome had the best of the Islanders’ scoring chances on Friday night, taking a shot from the slot midway through the second period and later deflecting a shot by Cal Clutterbuck on net. A pair of Panthers penalties within 25 seconds created a 5-on-3 that ended with Ryan Pulock scoring to cut the gap in half. But that ignores the bigger issue of what the Panthers are searching for – those same elusive qualities that ultimately speak to winning, that make winning second nature. New York’s play improved significantly during game two but so did the play of Luongo and the Panthers were able to level the series.
Greiss made 42 saves in his first playoff start of his career.
Hickey also scored the overtime victor at Washington on April 5 that clinched the Islanders’ third playoff berth in four years.
And when they finally got the lead, they didn’t give it back. That’s a big part of wearing them down going forward.
This is a whole new experience while the Islanders have been there done that.
Andrew Shaw stuffed home a rebound on a power play with 4:19 remaining, minutes after the Chicago Blackhawks won a coach’s challenge to negate a goal, and the defending Stanley Cup champions pulled even with the St. Louis Blues in their first-round series with a 3-2 victory Friday night.
The Islanders pretty much deserve to be right where they are. They know they can score on the Panthers.
Only when the Isles chose to crank up their own forecheck to begin the third period did they take control of the game.
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For Game 1, playoff experience was the best teacher for the Islanders.
