ELMONT, N.Y. — The Islanders have one foot inching toward the exit and another heading down the abyss.
Goals in the first two periods from Brent Burns, Dmitry Orlov, and Sebastian Aho on netminder Ilya Sorokin lifted the Carolina Hurricanes to a 3-2 victory over New York to take a commanding 3-0 first-round series lead on Thursday night at UBS Arena.
“It’s really frustrating and disappointing right now,” defenseman Noah Dobson said. “It definitely stings. We played, overall, a pretty solid game… The time of year, the margin for error is so small and we just have to find a way to get those goals back and bear down.”
Sorokin, who got his first start of the playoffs, yielded three goals on 14 shots (11 saves) and was pulled with 12:46 to go in the second period after Aho made it 3-1 for the visitors. In relief, Semyon Varlamov stopped all eight shots he faced, but it wasn’t enough as the Islanders could not take a page out of Carolina’s book to complete a comeback.
“We win and we lose as a team,” Roy said when asked about his decision to pull Sorokin. “I’m not going to go there but what I’m going to ay is we sometimes make changes as a coach because we feel we just want to change the momentum of the game. I’ll leave it at that.”
Pierre Engvall and Brock Nelson scored in the second period with Carolina netminder Freddy Andersen making 29 saves.
“We were resilient, that’s for sure,” Islanders head coach Patrick Roy said. “I thought it was a hard-fought game. There weren’t many chances on both sides. It was ap layoff game. We had a good push and we had our chances. The puck just wasn’t bouncing our way.”
Burns gave the visitors the lead 4:46 into the game when a wrister from the right point deflected past Sorokin in what was Carolina’s third shot of the night.
The Hurricanes soon doubled their advantage midway through the first thanks to soft Islanders play in the neutral zone. A hoper pass from Kyle Palmieri for Nelson was easily taken away to spark a rush the other way where Orlov snapped a wrister past the right toe of Sorokin, whose position was off.
Engvall got the Islanders on the board 2:48 into the second period, depositing a chance on the doorstep from a pass behind the goal line by Anders Lee.
Less than five minutes later, at the 7:14 mark of the frame, Aho got it right back for the Hurricanes on a wrist shot from between the circles that Sorokin looked as though he should have had. That was all Islanders head coach Patrick Roy needed to see as he pulled him for Varlamov.
“Sometimes you just want to change the momentum of the game,” Roy said. “It was a 3-1 game, I thought we were playing well. I just wanted to get some energy and actually, it did work because we scored right after.”
He stopped all five shots he faced in the second period while Nelson brought the Islanders to within one with 2:21 to go. Ryan Pulock’s shot from the point was tipped in front by Palmieri right into the path of Nelson at the right post to stuff it home.
New York kept up the pressure — unlike in Game 2 in which it was dominated by the Hurricanes, who overturned a 3-0 deficit for a demoralizing comeback win — and monopolized most of the attacking play. They had nine high-danger chances as opposed to Carolina’s six.
“Both teams played a pretty good, tight hockey game,” Palmieri said. “That’s what playoff hockey should look like. I think overall, there’s momentum both ways and we were just trying to find a way to get it done and we fell a little short.”
