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Tony DeAngelo was in, Ryan Pulock was out after one shift, Ilya Sorokin came in for Marcus Hogberg in overtime and the Islanders kept their momentum rolling with a comeback victory over the supercharged Hurricanes.
Other than that, not much was going on Saturday at UBS Arena.
Forty-eight games in, it’s that time of year for the Islanders.
The season is hitting an inflection point in these weeks before the 4 Nations Face-Off break.
What happens now dictates whether or not a team that’s trying desperately to prove it can still be a contender will get a chance to do so post-March 7.
As for this match against the Hurricanes in which storylines abounded, start with the immediate ramifications of a 3-2 overtime win over a Carolina team that extends this winning streak to a season-high four games on the back of Brock Nelson’s game-winning goal — exactly what the doctor ordered for a homestand that amounted to make-or-break on the season.
By the time the Islanders, who played Friday night against the Flyers, appeared to have their legs under them, the Hurricanes had already gone up 2-0 with goals from Jack Roslovic and Sebastian Aho, the second coming on a fluky bounce of the puck from behind the net, off Isaiah George’s skate and in.
The Islanders cut the lead in half on Alexander Romanov’s tally late in the first and spent the second steadily pressing, but failed to solve Pyotr Kochetkov, who stopped Bo Horvat and Jean-Gabriel Pageau on breakaways with two poke checks.
The breakthrough finally came 6:26 into the third, when Anders Lee followed Horvat’s initial shot by jamming it into the net, putting paid to the momentum the Islanders had steadily built for 30-plus minutes.
That opened up what had been a tight match with the Islanders steadily controlling possession into a track meet, with the teams trading chances throughout the rest of a highly entertaining third period.
With Andrei Svechnikov’s shot off the crossbar being the closest either team got to a winner in regulation, though, it took three-on-three overtime to settle a winner. Even that came with a twist, as Hogberg — apparently injured — went up the tunnel before overtime, ceding the net to Sorokin.
Nelson then netted the winner on an odd-man rush, and the whole place went batty.
Even with the Islanders on a decent run for the moment — they’ve won seven of nine and are inarguably playing their best hockey of the season — accomplishing the goal of making the playoffs is still the longest of long shots. Most other general managers would have looked at the standings a few weeks ago and pivoted; not Lou Lamoriello. Signing DeAngelo was another way of doubling down.
The newly minted No. 4 made his debut under tough circumstances, being asked to play well over 20 minutes of ice in a system he does not know without so much as a full practice. He held his own, which was about as much as anyone could have reasonably demanded of DeAngelo.
Pulock’s injury, though, complicates things far more. It was his three-point game in Boston early this month which helped kick the Islanders into high gear, and his renewed partnership with Adam Pelech has been a factor on a near-nightly basis.
There’s no timeline for now, so this could turn out to be nothing. But if Pulock does miss an extended period, the Islanders have just lost two of their most irreplaceable players in the span of a week.
Little about their situation was ideal before that became a factor. Things are now even tougher.
And still they march on.
