The Islanders played a much better Game 2 on Wednesday than they did in their series-opener against the Carolina Hurricanes.
However, what felt like a real opportunity to even the series at 1-1 heading back home was dashed when a controversial non-call in overtime led to the Islanders’ 4-3 loss, and an 0-2 hole in the series.
A few minutes into the overtime, Carolina’s Jordan Martinook seemingly hit Scott Mayfield in the face with his stick. Mayfield reacted to the stick by falling to the ice holding his face. The referees, who was standing in front of the incident, did not call the foul. Carolina took advantage with an odd-man rush that sealed the Islanders’ fate.
After the game, when asked if it was “bothersome” that the call was missed, coach Lane Lambert simply said, “Yeah” and revealed he was not given an explanation from the league or refs.
“You guys watched the game,” Zach Parise said after the game. “You saw. No reason for me to comment on it.”
Many on the team like Brock Nelson, whose goal gave the Islanders a lead in the third period, did not see the play as it was happening.
“I didn’t have a good angle on that odd-man rush,” he said. “At this point it doesn’t matter if I saw it.”
The missed high-stick was likely one of many missed calls on Wednesday night. The Hurricanes had six power plays (1-for-6) while the Islanders had none.
Game 2 was just the fourth time in NHL playoff history where a team had five or more power plays and their opponent had none. When Lambert was asked if was ever part of a game with that high of a penalty discrepancy, the first-year Islander coach took a beat before saying he probably has but none come to mind.
Despite the foul differential, the Islanders felt there was a lot of good to come out of Game 2’s performance. One was their penalty kill, which allowed just one goal in six attempts. The second was their offense. After scoring just one goal in Game 1, the Islanders clawed their way back into the game thanks to Kyle Palmieri and Mathew Barzal’s second-period goals while the team was down two goals.
“We’ve done that a number of times this year, bend don’t break,” Nelson said. “That was a huge goal by Barzal to give us a chance. This one hurts, but just gotta turn the page.”
Parise believes Carolina benefitted from a couple of soft goals that were the difference in the game,
“We played well enough to win, and we’ll move forward and do our best to grab the third one,” Parise said. “You look at the good things. We were in the driver’s seat. We were in a good position to win the game. It didn’t happen, but I think if you look at the game as a whole we’ll leave there saying to ourselves that there’s a lot of really good things that we did and just a couple fluky goals. That’s the difference.”
The Islanders will now host the Hurricane for Games 3 and 4 at UBS Arena on Long Island starting Friday.
